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Comment by grx | Hacker News Reader

Aside from the censorship debate, I still wonder what measures the German government has to enforce these fines. None of the discussed big companies are settled in Germany, but are regulated under European law. Where is the connection? Does a EU member have the capability to use EU regulators to enforce fines based on state law?

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I would expect any large company to have a subsidiary legal entity in each country it operates, even if just a sales office - they are operating in the local legal environment (in this case Germany).

e.g. Here is the UK subsidiary of Facebook - I'd expect there to be a German equivalent:

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06331310

Well, then they should shut down that German one, no?

And move all operations out of Germany.

Maybe blacklist all German IPs, just for jolly ;)

Edit: Also, Facebook does have a Tor onion gateway. For users in places that block access. That'd work as well for Germans as well as Chinese etc.

And lose a potentially valuable market - yes they could do that.

I wonder who would back down first.

At some point, Internet-based firms will need to take a stand on this. Otherwise, they'll just get pecked to death.

I would love that blacklist idea. I could finally remove all the Facebook DNS block entries from my devices.

You are right, it is located in Hamburg. Thanks for the hint, I always assumed Ireland was the EU-wide location!

https://www.facebook.com/shiploveahoi https://www.firmenwissen.de/az/firmeneintrag/20355/215148792...

Germany wields a ton of power within the EU, so it's reasonable to assume that if FB decides this is worth a fight they have to take into account that the fight could end up expanding beyond just Germany.

Even so, it's debatable how much actual authority the entirety of the EU has in this matter. They're not guaranteed cooperation via US courts and public institutions. They could threaten to wholesale block Facebook (or [insert other tech property here]), but I'm not sure that's realistic.

All in all I suspect we'll soon find out whether or not the EU is in fact a complete paper tiger : if they lose against Google & Facebook, they'll be unmasked as weak chest thumpers.

Do you think Facebook has no servers in Germany?

Germany has seized assets of corporations (for example, they did seize an airplane, to force the airline to pay back the cost of a ticket to a traveller whose flight was cancelled) before to enforce regulations.

Facebook will definitely want to avoid their hard- and software being seized and sold off to pay for a potential fine.

> Do you think Facebook has no servers in Germany?

They might have some leased servers, but afaik none of their custom built data centers are located there. Compared to abandoning a bespoke facility, packing up and moving out of a server farm is little more than a hassle.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-facebook-data-center-...

Facebook has custom-built servers in Sweden and Ireland, both of which could be easily seized via an EU-wide court warrant (which is actually possible to get).

And just seizing and selling their IP would be enough to encourage facebook not to violate the law.

Everyone would love buying their software and trained models.

Fair point, which I suspect will eventually lead to all major tech companies radically scaling back their investment in Europe. The cost of doing business was already high, now it's prohibitive and tyrannical.

The cost of doing business just with US companies is the same. The US will seize your assets, no matter where you are, if you as much as ever violate any of their laws.

Kim Dotcom is a good example.

Companies having to follow the law of where they provide their services is a far deal less prohibitive.

And, frankly said, I'd love it if Google, Facebook etc would leave the European market — as local competitors would appear very quickly, and, due to the huge size of the European market — would actually become viable competitors to the American companies even in the international market.

I don't think they expect to ever collect a fine at all; they can reasonably expect this law to eventually fail review with one or both of Germany's own supreme court and the EU.

The law only needs to hold up and silence dissent until Merkle is re-elected in a few months. Rank cynicism.

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