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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

This is still an insane ruling by the U.S. that has no reasonable force of law. The top court of Canada, the highest judiciary entity, has said that the results must be delisted. Nobody can overrule the Canadian court's ruling on this, especially not an American court. In order to be in compliance with Canadian law, the results must be delisted, and as a company operating in Canada, Google must comply with Canadian law.

A U.S. judge can claim all they want that Google doesn't need to comply, but it still leaves Google violating the Canadian court's orders. It's entirely within Canada's purview to begin fining Google and potentially seizing and shutting down their assets in Canada until they comply with the law.

The ideal that a Northern California court has some sort of authority over the matter is literally laughable.

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I think you may be missing something. Google is arguing that the Canadian ruling cannot be applied in the US. They will censor whatever they need to on their canadian assets, but if you connect to a US google server from Canada, they shouldnt be obliged to censor.

I'm not "missing" that. A country can set any criteria it wants upon a company that wishes to operate within it's borders. Including criteria that demands how that company behaves in other countries.

The U.S. does the same, and expects the same. In the scenario of this case, Canada is demanding that Google remove infringement of a Canadian citizen's copyright from Google's server. Similarly, the U.S. is well-known for aggressively pursuing entities in other country's for violating U.S. copyright protections.

Google is not the good guy here, they're trying to protect their ability to distribute pirated content. And they have no legal basis for their refusal to comply.

Note that Canada has not stated that data on a US server must be censored "when a Canadian connects to it". Canada has stated that Google must remove the data from all of their servers, regardless of where it is accessed. Aka, it is not okay to pirate a Canadian citizen's content even when it's on a US server and being accessed by a US citizen.

This really ought to be a concern of national export policy, as negotiated by governments. Google got the injuction for US services so they can hide behind US government policy and law as is appropriate.

If the US wants its companies to comply with the standards of Canada, thats a topic for legislation... not something that ought to given by default.

I guess I had not realised that Google.com is basically exporting - i think that despite everything, forcing the internet into the box of nation states is a bad thing.

The current laws do not fix the problem - but it is hard to see which ones will

Nothing is "forcing" the internet into a "box of nation states". It already is and always was. The Internet is not above or outside the law, and it's not above or outside nations.

Every piece of the Internet, every server, computer, router, and switch, is in one country or another (barring the few floating out in international waters), and every single one of them is subject to the law in the country where it is. And every individual or business entity operating them is subject to the laws in the countries they are or operate in. This has always been this way.

The Internet is not any different than any other communication medium. We don't perceive a phone call as being something above or outside the law of the nation it takes place in. We don't see mail as being above or outside the law of the nations it traverses. The Internet is just another medium of communication between people and businesses like any other.

It does raise certain issues that other forms of communication do not, certainly at this scale.

Does country A have any right to dictate what company B does in country C, just because company B operates in country A? Many of us say no, because that will only cause a downward spiral to make the internet the lowest common denominator of all countries that are connected.

This is already a concern with regards to other forms of trade, such as export restrictions where the US prohibits companies from doing business with Iran and North Korea.

Also note that country A absolutely can decide what terms upon which company B is allowed to operate in country A. This is true even of them stating what company B can and can't do in country C. If company B wants to do something in country C that company A prohibits, company B needs to decide whether it wants to operate in country A and follow country A's laws, or leave country A so it can do what it wants in country C.

The Internet is by design, and should be, decentralized. The "lowest common denominator" effect is an unfortunate side effect of centralized entities like Google trying to cater to everyone. But Google is the problem, exempting them from the law is hardly the solution. Smaller, localized providers will be able to better meet the needs of a given population's culture and laws, and address the unique problems associated with any given locality.

Yes, that does mean that the Internet won't look the same to everyone everywhere in the world, but that isn't a bad thing. Facebook in Myanmar is a great example that just because a website can be available globally doesn't mean it should. These global entities are not capable of understanding the impact they have on a macro or micro scale on that scope.

Doesn't this have case-law re: the DMCA's domain-name seizure process?

The US is perfectly willing to enforce its own rulings on foreign companies operating solely abroad, at the point at which those companies' goods/services enter the US.

So why wouldn't we just assume that every country is going to do the same; and so pre-emptively self-regulate if we want to do business in foreign markets with differing laws?

Canada has every right to say that it will block Google from Canadians accessing it unless/until they censor those pages, not just for Canadians, but for everybody. Given that, and given that Google knows that they could do that, what options are Google left with (assuming they care about remaining available to Canadians)?

Imagine Europe's high court says Google must not do what the Canadian court told them to do. Now what?

Presumably they would comply with one, and not with the other. And they'd in turn, face any punishment determined by the one they failed to uphold, up to, and including cessation of all of their business and seizure of their assets in the country they did not uphold the law.

Note that this is not merely theoretical, or unique to the internet:

https://m.dw.com/en/eu-to-reactivate-blocking-statute-agains...

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