>You do not need to abide by UK laws, even if your website is accessible from there.
The UK government does not agree.
All they can legally do is bitch and moan and order UK ISPs to block. There's no action they can legally take against Imgur.
Why shouldn’t Russia be allowed to exert their laws extraterritorially? Or Mali? Or Sudan? Or the Iranians? Or China? Or Israel?
What you’re asking for is the end of the internet, full stop.
It's likely simpler to just block access to the country's IP ranges (or ignore!) and move on.
Except in this case, Imgur does not have a legal entity falling under the UK's jurisdiction. They are purely a US based company. It's not like Google, Apple, etc. that have offices in the UK.
This particular fine is the UK trying to extend its jurisdiction to entities that it has no sovereign authority over.
Just because some UK user might visit my website doesn't mean I now have to follow all UK laws if I don't actually do business there, and don't intend to.
Blocking the traffic is how we end up with the balkanization of the internet.
That's exactly what it means.
On what basis should you be allowed to violate British law when interacting with a British resident? Because you're not under British jurisdiction? That would be incredibly illogical. Not only would it mean that people and companies under British jurisdiction are privileged by the British legal system over those in other jurisdictions, but it would also raise questions about the need for such legislation if the British legal system accepts that it's okay for people from other jurisdictions to violate it.
If all I do is host a website that serves images, and I'm not hosting nor operating out of the UK, why would I be subject to their laws? Just because it's accessible globally means I now have to factor in every possible regulation from around the world?
The burden shouldn't fall on me, the website operator, to block UK traffic because they want to restrict content or enforce age verification. Nor should they be able to fine me. It's up to the UK to have UK based ISPs block my site then.
Obviously a different story if I'm deliberately offering a paid service to UK citizens, or advertising to them, etc.
But to suggest that every website owner now needs to be aware of, and follow, ever nation's unique regulations will spell the death of the internet as a global network.
For the same reason that a person under British jurisdiction is subject to its laws. I mean, laws, including British ones, exist for a reason. And usually, that reason isn't "because they're British," and this reason makes sense regarding to non-residents as much as it does to residents.
> Just because it's accessible globally means I now have to factor in every possible regulation from around the world?
Literally. Unfortunately, international laws and international cooperation are not yet sufficiently developed, and extradition requests for such reasons are not a common occurrence yet.
> The burden shouldn't fall on me
The burden doesn't fall on you. That's not how laws work. Laws usually work like this: The British government decides that certain actions are harmful to the UK, and to prevent them, it punishes those who commit them. So, on what basis should you be granted an exception to this logic? These prohibited actions don't become any less harmful to the UK just because they were committed by someone in another jurisdiction.
Unfortunately? You’d prefer that the owner of a UK pro-LGBT site could be extradited to Uganda over some anti-gay law? Should BBC reporters be sent to the gulag for writing an unfavorable article about Russia?
The fantasy world you’re imagining will literally never happen. You are either absolutely blind to the reality of international relations or you’re trolling. This sort of extraterritorial reach over internet content would be impossible even within the EU (good luck getting Hungary to extradite over UK hate speech laws). It’s simply a non-starter no matter how much you try to claim that it’s “obviously” how things work.
(Edit: I looked at your comment history and found my answer.)
Ye I wish people did this more often. Looking at the consequences from an external view and also how things can be missused.
The usual response is some handwaiving "obviously it doesn't apply to the outgroup only to the ingroup as I define it don't be silly".