Nothing in section 166 makes it an offence for a service provider established outside of the United Kingdom to do anything in the course of providing information society services.
If—
the service provider shall be guilty in England and Wales of an offence under that section.
A service provider is not capable of being guilty of an offence under section 166 in respect of anything done in the course of providing so much of an information society service as consists in—
except where subsection (5) applies.
Information falls within this subsection if—
This subsection applies at any time in relation to information if—
In this section—
“the Directive” means Directive 2000/31/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2000 on certain legal aspects of information society services, in particular electronic commerce, in the Internal Market (Directive on electronic commerce);
“information society services”—
(a)has the meaning set out in Article 2(a) of the Directive (which refers to Article 1(2) of Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 June 1998 laying down a procedure for the provision of information in the field of technical standards and regulations, as amended by Directive 98/48/EC of 20 July 1998); and
(b)is summarised in recital 17 of the Directive as covering “any service normally provided for remuneration, at a distance, by means of electronic equipment for the processing (including digital compression) and storage of data, and at the individual request of a recipient of a service”;
“EEA State” means a state which is for the time being a member State, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein;
“recipient of the service” means any person who, for professional ends or otherwise, uses an information society service, in particular for the purposes of seeking information or making it accessible;
“service provider” means any person providing an information society service.