Google can be forced to pull results globally, Canada supreme court rules | Hacker News Reader

Google can be forced to pull results globally, Canada supreme court rules

theguardian.com

69 pointsfmihaila71 comments

This needs to be rejected whole sale. One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. The censorship issues that have been cropping up lately in these regards are appalling. The "hate speech" legislature of many EU nations comes to mind. If that insanity were to be enforced "world wide" it's seriously time for new service providers to step up that aren't so money hungry for those markets to capitulate.

Exactly. Google should have subsidiaries in each nation it operates and obey the local law - nothing more and nothing less. Canadia courts should not have an effect on Mexico, and Iranian courts should not have an effect on the US.

Google can sell/offer it's services anywhere as long as it's legal.

Google doesn't want that because not every subsidiary would be profitable, and they would have to pay local taxes in every country they have an office/employ people/generate revenue.

So if Google operates a subsidiary in China, they should be completely immune from a lawsuit in the US, if say, they sell your private personal info to the highest bidder in that nation?

I don't see how that could be abused...

Your question at the moment is ill-defined. Carefully expand out the nationalities of the "you" who is buying the info, the nationalities of the person whom the info is about, the nationality of the subsidiary from which the information is being purchased, and the nationality under which you believe they should be suable. ("Jurisdiction", if you prefer, may replace "nationality".)

There's a lot of combinations in there, and I don't think conversation can be profitable had without being clear. It's fine to fill it in with variables, too, I'm not asking for a concrete binding, but at the very least your question as I read it now is missing whose information is being sold.

(Also note the ONLY thing I'm saying here is that you need to be more clear. I am not making any claims of my own at this time, because before I can have an opinion about an answer to a question, there needs to be a question.)

Chinese subsidiary, Chinese buyer, US citizen.

How would the Chinese subsidiary get the info about the US citizen?

Logically, for China Google to sell your data to Chinese Buyer, then US Google must have sold your data to China Google. If it is illegal for US Google to sell data to third parties, then US Google could be sued for selling that data to China Google. However, since the USA is all about "Freedom meaning we can do what the fuck we like with your data", and not "Freedom from persecution", there's no reason that US Google couldn't do what you describe. If you were a European citizen, and it was German Google selling your data to China Google (or US Google), then that'd be a very different story.

It seems odd that you're worried about China, when you live in a nation that has been proven to wiretap you by the government, and where private transactions are authorized based on information which three credit score companies store completely insecurely.

Google does not sell your personal data. They do use to Target ads but does not leave Google.

Google might not sell data wholesale, but they do sell it retail, so to speak. If I make an ad targeting gay dog owners in NYC, and someone clicks that ad, I know that Google knows they're a gay dog owner in NYC. Google sold me that person's data.

Or more succinctly, a lot of people don't really find a meaningful difference between selling data and selling access to or use of that data.

So does that mean that we should punish Google when it pulls our YouTube video due to trademark concerns valid only inside US and videos with pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, pro-ISIS political slant?

Or does this your idea only work for US cultural norms? Should we then start processes of getting Google out of EU, Asia? After all, a media service who distributes illegal content inside your borders, spreads US propaganda, bans your propaganda ... is dangerous right?

How do we reconcile the fact that those are global services?

> Or does this your idea only work for US cultural norms?

Always these false equivalences, every time. I can count on it. In this case, I'm sure GP thinks as I do, that no US court should be able to tell a company what to take down elsewhere in the world. That Google chooses to is another matter. Please please, can we stop trying to deflect the real issue with these whataboutisms?

In this particular case, the whole thing is probably more complicated than what it seems: it's not entirely clear that Google chooses to is another matter.

As a reference: "The Digital Disruption - Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power" by Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen [http://archive.is/R13l2]

In the past people interpreted the article as "US companies control a large proportion of the internet infrastructure, the government can use this as a foreign policy tool". If you're a foreigner this may not sound cool..

It is natural for a company that maintains complex and entrenched relationships with a government, to influence and being influenced, at home and abroad.

Sure. But that doesn't change the common moral stance that one has of "X government should not be able to force a company to do things outside of X's jurisdiction" for any values of X, even if that is at odds with what currently happens today. And some people's morals may extend the quote to "if company is not headquartered in X" or "if company does not do business in X" or whatever they may think. But the conversation on the morals themselves cannot be had if all we do is replace values of X for three reasons: 1) it assumes people have inconsistent morals, and 2) no two situations are the same and 3) the conversation is diluted.

To your broader point about US internet hegemony and government influence, I think it doesn't sound cool to many regardless of where they reside. If we must draw equivalence for history's sake here, one could look at the dissemination of culture over and over again and protectionist measures by the encroached upon in order to retain power, often against the will of the citizens. Over time, people will do what they want, in the meantime all most want is those with power to limit themselves. It also has value to recognize the environments that foster these cultural innovations and fight fire with fire instead of power.

I agree on the ideal of extra jurisdictional non-interference, but I consider it an ideal. Realistically, a global intercommunication network involves risks. Risks that people should have the chance to manage.

When companies and governments take away the freedom of self-determination from people, then the question becomes more complex.

This is why, despite agreeing with the moral stance, I believe that Google has been put in a difficult position, and do not need a priori defence.

Freedom of information is an important issue, but I prefer to turn my attention to less controversial actors.

> One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns.

The actually do, that's inherent in the nature of sovereignty. You can eliminate the practical effect of that by adopting a single shared global sovereign regime, but that idea is controversial even in the abstract, and in concrete detail even moreso, as those who agree that such a thing is desirable disagree violently on the character that such a regime should have, and mostly view not having one as better than having the wrong one, so we are stuck in a system of multiple sovereigns.

Do you mean that sovereignty grants that authority in principle, or in actuality? If the United States doesn't enforce the demands of another country with respect to a company in its borders, the company can freely ignore those demands. That various countries choose to have treaties enforcing the demands of others seems to be less about sovereignty and more about good relations.

For example, Germany ordered Project Gutenberg to remove certain books from its servers or to make them unavailable to Germans. I maintain a full mirror of Project Gutenberg and I make the banned books available to Germans. If Germany sent me a personal letter demanding I cease and desist, I'd ignore it. If the United States demanded I cease and desist on Germany's behalf, I wouldn't ignore it. But the latter doesn't seem like "Germany's sovereignty" to me.

> Do you mean that sovereignty grants that authority in principle, or in actuality?

Yes, both.

> If the United States doesn't enforce the demands of another country with respect to a company in its borders, the company can freely ignore those demands.

The authority to legislate and the ability to impose consequences are two different things. It is, for instance, indisputable that the US has authority to criinalize tax fraud by it's citizens occuring within the US, but if a tax fraudster escapes to a foreign country with all their possessions before the US catches them, and that country is uninterested in assisting the US, the US may well find it practically impossible to enforce sanctions without engaging in interstate conflict.

The only difference with the situation at hand is that an act committee overseas by a foreign entity is more likely to be difficult to sanction since flight for the purpose of evasion is less likely to be necessary (OTOH, if the offender has any contact with the offended jurisdiction, they are still at risk, and being g ofrced to avoid the jurisdiction to avoid sanctions may itself be a kind of sanction.)

The US has strongarmed other countries into helping enforce US tax law.

It's crazy to see American's pretend the US isn't a massive offender when it comes to pushing their laws well outside their borders.

>>>the company can freely ignore those demands

>>>If Germany sent me a personal letter demanding I cease and desist, I'd ignore it.

You (presumably) don't do any business in Germany, or really care about their government being unhappy with you, which is pretty reasonable. Google wants to keep doing business in Canada, so they have to play ball. Can Canada send people into the US offices of google to enforce any of this? Of course not. But can they shut down google in Canada if it refuses to abide by court orders? You bet. (I doubt it'll come to that though)

You have the actual solution, in fact. How long does anyone think a Canadian supreme court decision could stand if Google ceases operations in Canada?

I suppose they could stand up a Baidu-like Canadian Google replacement, but it would take a while.

So this is lawfare between a company that makes something and a company purported to have stolen their design. I guess the question that really would make it interesting is what country is the purported design thief in?

I think it's actually quite common for a country to dictate what it's citizens and companies can do outside of its borders.

For example,

* A US company can be prosecuted on corruption charges if it bribes an official out of its borders. This is even if what they do is not considered bribery in the country itself; you are bound to the US law even when you are doing business outside of it. The US has used this approach to clamp down corruption cases of companies in developing countries.

* Trade embargos work this way. We have an embargo on Iran and ban US based companies from doing business with them, even if its through a subsidiary that operates outside our borders

* US citizens are required to pay taxes when they live in another country (we are the only country to tax globally)

* As a US traveler, you have to follow some US laws even when you are in other countries. The US has used this to combat sex tourism. So while it may be easy to go around the country's age of consent laws while you are visting, you can still be prosecuted in the US. This is to prevent child sex trafficking etc.

Nomentatus has listed other examples in this thread.

Enforcement, on the other hand is pretty difficult. I don't see how Canada force Google to do things outside of it's borders - the worst they can do is kick Youtube out their country.

* That is a US company

* The ban affects US companies

* The taxes affect US citizens

* The laws affect US citizens

This has nothing to do with this decision.

What Canada is aiming to do is to force a non-Canadian company to follow Canadian law even if it does not operate at all in Canada.

It's interacting with Canadian citizenship and being paid by Canadian companies for advertising.

If it's literally doing no operations inside of Canada then they have nothing to worry about because Canada couldn't do anything to them.

Its pretty hypocritical of companies to rely on local laws to protect them but then act like all their customers on the internet don't exist in any real space and aren't under a nation states juridisction.

I'd prefer a completely free internet, but you don't get to have it both ways

Just to be clear I was responding to the OP's statement "One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns". This is incorrect - a nation regularly forms laws on what its companies and citizens can do outside of its borders and concerns.

Now what you are staying is something completely different from the OPs argument - you are stating "Google is not a Canadian entity so neither Op's or my arguments matter". I am not a legal expert so I have no idea but the statement that Google "does not operate at all in Canada" seems misleading as I know that Google has offices based in Canada. They have Canadian citizens working in Canadian offices under a registered entity so I am not sure why you are saying that Google "does not operate at all in Canada".

Google makes money advertising to Canadians. that sounds a lot like operating in canada

Then Google needs to close its Canadian offices, and stop providing services to Canadians.

Nothing requires Google to do business in Canada, and it's not like this is the first Canadian law to extend to things that happen internationally.

> One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns.

We crossed this bridge quite a while ago, it's only the direction that's changing. If I hacked a server in the US from the UK guess where I'm being charged? If I send drugs from Canada to the US guess where I'm being charged? These aren't hypotheticals, they've happened before.

I agree it needs to be changed, but this was foreseeable a long time ago and nobody cared.

This has already been blocked by a US court https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-court-sides-with-google-aga... so it's in the BC court to get modified.

False according to the article you cited - Google could go to court in Canada with a request... as it always could. One can request anything, almost, in a court, or sue anyone. But can you win.

> threatens free speech on the global internet," wrote Judge Edward Davila of the US District Court for Northern California. Really, pulling listings for a counterfeit product is a free speech issue?

That's dumb.

Google initially de-indexed 345 specific webpages associated with Datalink on google.ca.

Equustek then sought an injunction to stop Google from displaying any part of the Datalink websites on any of its search results worldwide.

Google already agreed to pull the listings. It's when they wanted the whole website removed that they pushed back.

Yes, the Canadian courts understand precisely how the internet works... through Canadian ISPs who can be forced block traffic from some companies and not others.

The point of the ruling could be summarized this way: "If you wish to do business in Canada, with a web business that's visible in Canada, then there are certain practices you can't be guilty of elsewhere or in general."

This isn't new. For example, it is commonplace for governments to forbid domestic contracts with businesses who, elsewhere in the world, employ bribery in their ordinary course of business. Same general concept here. Don't be too surprised if tactics like this emerge elsewhere to combat online gambling, for example, since gamblers and online gambling companies have been adept at getting around superficial blocks.

It's also commonplace to allow lawsuits in the U.S. that seek to penalize governments and other institutions for conduct that happened outside the U.S., but affected people in the U.S.

A previous parallel issue in Canada concerns the publication of Federal Election results; I don't know how energetic Canada has been in enforcing it lately, but the idea was to not allow Canadian media or ISPs to facilitate publishing any election results outside a given Province until the whole country had voted, since voters in the West might not even go to the polls if they knew that the election had already been decided by votes in the East. (Canada spans a lot of time zones.)

Given the difficulty of limiting information exchange over the internet there aren't many alternatives to rulings that take into consideration a company's conduct elsewhere before allowing them to freely communicate in one's own country.

Whether you like the specific reason (trigger) for this principle being invoked is an entirely different question I don't address here; but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable.

It's also interesting to think about the controversial Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in the U.S. in this regard.

>but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable.

sounds great and all until oppressive regimes use this to do censor content they don't like. how long until russia/china/iran sends a rubberstampped a court order to censor a politcal candidate's advertisements because [made up reason]?.

They're going to do that anyway. Why should Canada abandon its own national sovereignty because of the actions of dictators on the other side of the world that would happen regardless?

It's going to be a lot harder for Google to refuse global censorship orders from countries you don't like when it's routinely taking global censorship orders from countries you like.

Sure, but it doesn't really change anything about the power dynamics. Any international company cannot afford to refuse a court order form a country they need to do business in.

I agree, so I think there's at least room for a treaty between free countries as to what they could do to restrict internet traffic across borders, but won't. The European right to forget legislation, which I should have mentioned, makes any such agreement very tough, however, I suspect.

Russia is already extremely energetic in deciding who can and can't do business there, and who can run in elections (framed opposition leader in last election.) Ditto elsewhere. They aren't waiting for us. You have every right to discuss of the advisability of the courts ruling, I just note again that that wasn't something I offered an opinion on.

Terrible ruling, do they even understand how the internet works?

Oh well, when you're a global company, this is the BS you have to deal with.

Are you saying it's impossible for Google to block some results globally?

Because even if I may agree with the sentiment, I don't see how technology is the problem here–differences in law are.

And if technology were the problem, that'd be the weakest possible argument. Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with.

It's not impossible for Google to do, it's unjust for one nation to regulate the conduct of a company in every country.

Whose society? Whose democracy? The fundamental argument for democracy’s legitimacy is that citizens can (theoretically) influence policy. You don’t get to vote in foreign countries, but they get to censor your view of the internet?

We wouldn’t even be talking about Russian election meddling if Russia had global internet censorship power.

> "Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with."

Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters. Invoking 'the legitimacy of process' really makes me cringe here as it's undoubtedly the exact sort of logic that led people to let religious institutions hold back the world for centuries. And that rule was not authoritarian in practice, even if it may have been in law. Poll the masses of the time and you'd see a democratic consensus for most of these incredibly backwards decisions that held society back.

So to me the question is does a court in country A have a right to demand that a company in country B behave differently in country C? Is this a reasonable restriction of freedom? To me that seems to be a resounding no. Perhaps you can argue there are good reasons for this, but please do so in means other than invoking some appeal to 'legitimacy', whatever that's supposed to mean.

> Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters

What a useless platitude...

Any government anywhere reduces someone's freedom in some way. Yet not no society has decided to forgo this mechanisms in the pursuit of pure "freedom".

If you actually believe in anarchistic utopias...fine. You're wrong, but many people are. But otherwise simply screaming freedom, freedom just isn't an argument.

It's not impossible, just stupid.

I'd say that yes, they do.

There's little point in removing the results from google.ca and not google.com.

There's little point in removing search results for DataLink from Google results worldwide when they could enjoin DataLink from selling any of the products in question.

According to the article, Google is not even a party in the lawsuit.

So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? What do they do then? I assume that since the US/other court wouldn't be forcing them, they would default to pulling it since Canada can apparently force them to do so, so pulling the data is mandatory in Canada but "voluntary" for the rest of the world.

Far more importantly, a single country is now censoring the speech of companies globally. That's a truly astounding verdict to issue in a court of law. What about the sovereignty of all other nations?

> So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally?

More interesting is when one sovereignty prohibits and imposes sanctions on behavior mandated with sanctions for non-compliance by another sovereignty. With various states adopting broad mandates for data retention while others are adopting mandates for removal, there are likely going to be circumstances where those conflict.

that seems pretty simple, really: the company chooses one jurisdiction to operate in

The endpoint of all this, which I now believe is basically inevitable in the long run, is Balkanization of the internet: eventually, Google and/or Canadian ISPs will only let Canadian users reach google.ca (with its modified results), and not google.com. The same will go for every other country.

This is the only way to square the two opposing aims of not letting countries censor the internal globally, but still let them have sovereignty within their borders and have their decisions enforced. I'm not happy about that, but I don't see any other way around the issue. Continuing with the status quo essentially means sovereignty is dead and everyone now just has America's speech laws whether they like it or not. Even if that's what HN wants, it's just not going to happen.

So, Company A sues Company B. The Canadian courts enjoin Company B from selling the products in question. Company B ignores the injunction. The Canadian courts, because they can't think of anything better to do, request Google to remove all evidence of Company B from their results.

One wonders if Bing/DDG/etc. also received such requests?

(Apparently not (https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.co... the datatechgateways link doesn't seem to be in Google's results.)

OMG, no. This is ridiculous and I love Canada.

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" -- Andrew Jackson (apocryphal)

Its interesting that Google is making a 'freedom of expression' argument when they themselves heavily censor YouTube content. Google controls the platform their users use, and the Government controls the 'platform' that both companies and users use. I suppose nobody cares about the users in both cases.

Google has left the content and is paying the infrastructure cost for the content. No advertisers so they demonetized. That is not the same as censoring.

> That is not the same as censoring.

That is just one case. There are other cases of youtube/google banning peoples accounts. In any case, the person I replied to was equating de-indexing with censoring.

Anyone whose video is taken down by YouTube is free to host it themselves. On their own servers, they're free to express themselves.

Google, similarly, wants the freedom to express itself on its own servers.

Google is allowed to host or not whatever they want. They can do it wherever they want. They are not a government.

A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally? That's scary/stupid.

Actually, they are not allowed to do whatever they want. Nobody is, but okay, believe that if you may.

>A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally?

If Google had individual companies in individual countries, with no data (Google's property) being shared, you might have a point. Its a bit more complicated than you make it sound.

> That's scary/stupid

I believe that things seem less scary or stupid if you take the time to understand them.

Is this even enforceable?

>Is this even enforceable?

You mean practically or legally?

The actual California sentence makes it unenforceable legally (in the US):

https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/google-v-equustek-united...

It should be actually marked [2017], however.

No it is not enforceable and rather silly.

Google sells over $2B worth of advertising to Canadians every year, plus a bunch of phones and other services. If they're not willing to abandon that revenue, it's certainly very enforceable.

Not to mention 3 offices with a good number of employees between them. Some very high profile (e.g. Geoffrey Hinton).

Depends. What happens to Google's worldwide revenue when they set the precedent of removing information based on one country's legal findings. They have previously shut down most of their services in China, which seems like it would be a bigger market.

Let's break the Internet, one law at a time....

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