Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

> "And you can manage that okay. You can manage on a per country basis. You feel good about that?

> "Sure. I mean, for us, that’s easy. And then we can provide that to our customers as a function of what we’re doing. But I think that if you could say, German rules don’t extend beyond Germany and French rules don’t extend beyond France and Chinese rules don’t extend beyond China and that you have some human rights floor that’s in there."

I'd be curious about that human rights floor. It's one thing to follow laws in a western democratic country with elections and rule of law, but it's another to do so in countries without elected governments or rule of law. It sounds like they're thinking about this since he explicitly mentioned the human rights floor, so that's good at least.

> "Right. But given the nature of the internet, isn’t that the whole problem? Because, anyone in Germany can go to any website outside of Germany.

> "That’s the way it used to be, I’m not sure that’s going to be the way it’s going to be in the future."

This makes me sad, I hope we don't end up in a highly nationalized intranet style future but it does seem like things are trending that way (unfortunately).

A highly nationalized internet is the inevitable consequence of national and supranational government orgs making demands that extend to companies or users beyond their jurisdiction. HN, disappointingly, seems to support a lot of these measures when it’s a “good guy” (like Germany or the EU) doing it to a “bad guy” (like Facebook), but seems to miss the broader implication.

If the internet is going to remain an open and fully connected global network, it’s absolutely necessary that internet entities don’t need to worry about the laws of some country halfway around the world.

The alternative is, at best, every website being IP-locked to a small set of countries. Either self-censored to countries that sites feel legally safe exposing themselves to, or censored by governments at transnational network boundaries.

> don’t need to worry about the laws of some country halfway around the world.

For me, the DCMA is the laws of a country halfway around the world, that the US tries damn hard to enforce on other countries.

This. America has acted as world policeman for decades (skylarov, Kim dot com, patriot act, dmca), now other countries are acting the same there’s outrage from the American tech community.

There's also the general impression that neutrality is the same as maintaining the American status quo or their interests only.

Some of us don't support the US doing it either.

sure, but it sometimes seems like the majority do support it.

What website are you on? 99% of people on HN are strongly anti-DMCA, but completely fail to see why it’s bad in principle (because one country is exercising hegemonic influence over the global internet). They love the same type of thing as long as it’s introduced to screw over Facebook.

I agree that that's kind of an double standard, but copyright rules including those similar to DMCA are very widely accepted in almost all countries outside the US, too, even though not all enforce them. [1]

In a simial vein I can see myself being in favor of some basic privacy rights applicable worldwide, too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty

Yes, and DMCA is terrible. I want less of this. HN constantly argues for more of this without even realizing it, because they think they’re sticking it to Facebook.

The problem with this is not censorship, but corporations having reached a global scale while democracy is by and large stuck on the national level.

Being accountable to some level of democratic governance is not the bane of free speech and capitalism, it is the foundation of a truly free market that has space for newcomers to innovate and compete, as well as citizens to have their rights protected.

The national democracies have created the legal and economic infrastructure for companies to go international, it's silly to think that without that basis companies could even exist at all. They need protection by the rule of law as much as citizens. The free market is not a jungle - for an open internet for example we really need some form of net neutrality.

I think of lot of EU citizens feel we also need some form of GDPR that is actually respected, and the US is actually the problem hindering an open, fully connected internet and global network here.

This is a weak argument.

If democratically elected governments aren't supposed to regulate corporations then who should?

They can regulate companies within their own borders. Not someone in a totally different country. Again, unless you want the internet to be siloed.

What does "within their own borders" mean?

I'm in Australia. If I buy ads on Google I believe I'm actually dealing with Google Ireland, because the money goes there.

But they have servers in Australia. But their headquarters is in the US.

The EU approach (~"oh, you want to move where you measure your revenue around? Ok, we will look at global revenue") seems like a logical response to the way multinationals use corporate structure to avoid tax.

I’m not interested in arguing with you about the pedantic details of establishing legal presence. I am simply telling you the inevitable consequence of forcing any company who sends packets to a country to now follow that country’s laws: only huge companies with tons of lawyers will be able to afford it, and everything else will be siloed by country. Google is just about the only American website that you’ll be able to get in Australia.

The idea that large multinational corporations are unaccountable to sovereign entities is far more frightening than the scenario you’re putting forward.

No one elected Zuckerberg to be the global monarch. I don’t want him making the laws that govern global society.

Why should a, say, Canadian company be “accountable” to the US, Germany, or China?

If said company only does business in Canada i see no reason for them to be accountable to the US, Germany or China.

Why should foreign companies be entitled to enter a country and break said countries laws? Is it your position that we should do anyway with the notion of sovereignty and the rule of law all together?

> If said company only does business in Canada i see no reason for them to be accountable to the US, Germany or China.

So, to be clear, you are explicitly arguing for the case where the internet should be siloed on a country-by-country basis unless participants are willing and able to establish a legal business presence in every country they’re accessible from? That’s what “doing business” means on the internet.

> Why should foreign companies be entitled to enter a country and break said countries laws?

Sending packets over the internet isn’t “entering a country”.

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