Britain fined an American website $691,000 for refusing to delete its users' speech.
Congress watched 197 of those censorship orders land on American companies with almost no pushback.
Now a Republican congressman just introduced the one law that makes every future foreign censorship demand backfire on the sender.
How Ofcom Used the UK Online Safety Act to Fine an American Website $691000 for Refusing to Censor Its Users
Britain's speech police – Ofcom – discovered a cheap trick.
Under the UK's Online Safety Act, they could send threatening emails to American websites demanding censorship compliance, risk assessments, and age verification systems.
Ofcom stamped each one CONFIDENTIAL and threatened both ruinous fines and prison time for non-compliance.
Between February 2025 and April 2026, Ofcom sent at least 197 of those notices to American companies.
Only four were publicly refused.
All four belonged to the same lawyer.
Preston Byrne – who represents 4chan, an American website incorporated in Delaware with no offices or employees in Britain – sent back one reply after another explaining that British censorship law has no jurisdiction on American soil.
Ofcom responded by escalating the fines anyway.
Byrne replied to four of those demands with pictures of hamsters.
The final tab landed at £520,000 for a platform that had never agreed to play by British rules in the first place.
Ofcom then announced it would seek help from American law enforcement to collect.
Byrne called the move legally incoherent – if Britain wanted to collect a foreign censorship penalty in an American court, he said, the fight was theirs to start.
When 4chan and Kiwi Farms – another American forum Ofcom had targeted – dragged Ofcom into federal court in Washington, Ofcom tried something remarkable.
They claimed sovereign immunity – arguing they couldn't be sued in America because they're a foreign government.
At the same time, they were claiming British law applied on American soil.
A government can't claim immunity from American courts while also claiming authority over American companies.
Congress noticed.
The GRANITE Act Turns Every Foreign Censorship Demand Into a First Amendment Fight in Washington
Ohio Republican Rep. Michael Rulli introduced H.R. 10174 on August 27 – the GRANITE Act.
The full name says everything: Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion Act.
The bill does two things.
The shield bars every American court – state or federal – from recognizing or enforcing any foreign censorship judgment, fine, order, or demand.
The sword lets any American targeted by one of those demands drag the foreign government straight into federal district court and get a declaration that the order is unenforceable.
Rulli put it plainly: "My bill makes clear that if a foreign government tries to punish an American for speech protected by the First Amendment, that judgment is dead on arrival in our courts."
"The Constitution protects our right to speak freely. It does not bend to Brussels or London."
The bill also strips the sovereign immunity defense – the exact legal escape hatch Ofcom tried to use against 4chan in federal court.
GRANITE already has the backing of the White House, the State Department, and the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan.
This is not Britain's first attempt to export censorship to America.
In 2010, Congress passed the SPEECH Act after Russian oligarchs and Saudi billionaires discovered they could sue American journalists in English courts – where defamation law puts the burden of proof on the defendant, not the plaintiff.
The SPEECH Act killed that racket.
GRANITE is the same play for the digital age.
The difference is scale.
Ofcom sent 197 demands in 14 months.
The European Union's Digital Services Act is running a parallel operation targeting American platforms from a different direction.
Without GRANITE, the only thing standing between foreign censors and American speech is a judge-made rule that a trial court could get wrong on any given Tuesday.
Foreign censors know this – and they're counting on it.
Most platforms don't fight back.
Not because they're legally required to comply, but because most aren't willing to pick a fight with a foreign government.
Byrne estimated Ofcom spent 2,800 staff-hours pursuing 4chan and collected zero compliance, one federal lawsuit, and hamster pictures.
Under GRANITE, every one of those 197 demands could have become a federal court date with Ofcom as the defendant.
What used to be a free email sent from London is now a trigger for expensive, public, American litigation – with the foreign censors themselves on the hook.
Britain picked this fight assuming the cost was zero on their end.
One Ohio Republican just proved them wrong.
Sources:
- Rep. Michael Rulli, H.R. 10174, "Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion Act," U.S. House of Representatives, August 27, 2026.
- Preston Byrne, "America Strikes Back Against Foreign Censors With The Rulli GRANITE Act, HR 10174," prestonbyrne.com, August 28, 2026.
- Free Speech Union, "Republican congressman and Trump ally introduces bill to exempt US websites from Ofcom," freespeechunion.org, August 28, 2026.
- Christina Maas, "Federal GRANITE Act Targets Foreign Censorship Orders in US," Reclaim The Net, August 29, 2026.
