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Comment by DangerousPie | Hacker News Reader

It was a warrant issued by a Spanish court that Github legally had to comply with. You can be angry at the court for issuing such a warrant but you can't be angry at Github for complying. They are not above the law, even if they may disagree with it.

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US companies have no legal obligation to comply with a Spanish court order. A MLAT must be arranged and approved before US companies have a legal obligation.

GitHub's compliance with the court order was voluntarily and discretionary; just like how if the North Korea courts told me to shut down my site, you have every right to say no.

>US companies have no legal obligation to comply with a Spanish court order.

Sure while they're just a US company. What happens when they open an office in Spain?

Wasn't the request sent to Microsoft Spain? And Microsoft Spain is under the jurisdiction of the Spanish Government.

The unintended but extremely obvious consequences of centralization strike again.

What happens if you don't comply is that the court would then order all the ISPs to cut the lines to you. All of them.

Also, GitHub happily accepts money from companies in Spain. This mean they have economical activity there and fall under Spanish jurisdiction.

You can certainly be angry at Github for complying. People break the law all the time in order to do what is moral. Look at Chelsea Manning who's in jail right now for just that.

This may be very selfish of me but I'd prefer if Github didn't get shut down over some political argument that I'm not a party in.

It would also involve Github taking sides in a very divise political issue that is far from black and white.

What mechanism could a Spanish court use to shut down an American multi-billion dollar company?

At worst, it could get GitHub blocked in Spain, or a local Microsoft office might get a stern look or two before Spain renews its Office 365 contract or whatever.

GitHub being shut down in Spain for ignoring a court order is more harmful than one repo being blocked by a court order, imo.

There seems to be this belief in the atmosphere that companies of all sizes should blithely ignore content takedowns when the alternative is large fines or exclusion from a country. This is not a realistic demand and you will be disappointed every time if you maintain it.

Interesting but off-topic none-the-less: lots of the regional governments in Spain is using open source software for their offices, like LibreOffice. I know both Valencia and Catalan governments are vocal about using and developing open source software.

A spanish court could order spanish ISPs to block GitHub until they obey their order. They could also charge spanish Microsoft executives with disobedience, contempt or something similar.

> They could also charge spanish Microsoft executives with disobedience, contempt or something similar.

Unlikely, as the local executives likely didn't make this decision and don't have control over it. Guilt by association (employer) is not legal, even in Spain.

Google and Facebook executives operating in my country have been arrested for failing to comply with court orders.

https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/26/3413476/google-brazil-you...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-executive-arrested-in-...

I wouldn't rule it out regardless of the country involved.

They have already done that at DNS level. Most ISPs in Spain have configured their DNSs servers to redirect tsunamidemocratic.github.io to 127.0.0.1

https://twitter.com/armadillu/status/1186315453108555778?s=2...

I'm well to the left of Hacker News, but on this point we disagree. If we get angry with people for not breaking the law, we create an environment where people pretend to be activists to avoid our wrath.

That removes the biggest and most important component of activism: People's authentic willingness to sacrifice in exchange for the greatest good.

People need to make a free and willing choice to engage in civil disobedience.

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Now that being said, there's another thing on which we might agree. Even if they don't break the law, I am prepared to disapprove of companies that are complicit in wrongdoing.

Complicity is looking the other way or participating. For example, supplying goods and services to ICE is being be complicit in ICE's actions.

I am not going to be angry with someone who complies with a court order to supply, say, employee information to ICE. But I will be angry with a company--cough, Microsoft, cough--who provides billions of dollars in services to ICE.

All anger is allowable. Caretaking for an activist's response to hearing anger is codependent.

How is your stance not in line with people insisting on niceness from people belonging to historically oppressed classes?

Shutting down emotions isn't activism. Standing in solidarity and elevating the voice of the oppressed, angry or not, is.

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