Top Canadian Court Permits Worldwide Internet Censorship
eff.org
eff.org
The title is false as stated, two ways - the courts aren't permitting, they're insisting; and they aren't insisting on a worldwide ban, only that companies who want to do business in Canada can't facilitate websites/information being read in Canada that's banned in Canada. Practically, of course, this may mean companies choosing either worldwide bans or not doing business in Canada.
Funny thing is, this isn't actually new. There are (or were) already Canadian laws that don't allow the publication of Federal election results in time zones where voting is still happening, and frequent court-imposed bans on publication. These laws would also not be satisfied by Google's admittedly feeble solution of scrubbing their official Canadian portal, but not their other portals, also easily accessed in Canada. But nobody pressed the issue so far in those previous non-commercial cases.
Canada doesn't have jurisdiction over the world and isn't pretending it does. It does have jurisdiction in Canada and is saying to Google et al: "If you want to serve ads here or have your Playstore sell digital goods here, then you can't also serve up websites we've ordered blocked, period. Choose one." This permits further, future actions to block Google in Canada if it can't comply or doesn't wish to.
Which brings up international comity, of course. Canada isn't the only country that can play this game. Given the international nature of webformation, Google would have to descend to the lowest common denominator, blocking everywhere anything legally blocked anywhere (that it wants to do business.) (Or maybe creating a Chinese firewall everywhere, with unique filters in every country, which would be hella expensive.) Such a trend may not be in the common interest of course; in other words it may pose a prisoner's dilemma. Probably does. So it's likely time to go back to the treaty table, or perhaps to rewrite-Canadian-laws-again. Still, as the law stands it's hard for the courts to decide anything other than what they just decided. Information is either banned within Canada or it isn't - symbolic changes that still allow Canadians to be referred to a banned website don't fulfill the law.
It's an order against Google. To the extent Google relies on ability to do business in Canada, it can be enforced against Google. Talking about enforcing it against anyone else is irrelevant, since it doesn't apply to anyone else.