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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

Does Glassdoor actually have any business operations or webservers in NZ that would be subject to this order if it was issued from a court in NZ?

Since when does a NZ order apply to a non NZ company. For example, American media regularly publishes the names of persons charged with crimes in Canada where the name may be banned from publication by a Canadian court. It's a first amendment thing.

If US companies start obeying orders like this, how is it any different from getting a court order from a "totally neutral" court in Hong Kong, actually controlled by beijing, to de-anonymize the users of an american-based web service.

Looking at the details, it appears that they were sued in a us court in California, so the order does apply.

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Zuru's entity spans multiple regions, a Californian court can compel a US-based entity to hand over records for data held in another region. It's the reason why some organisations refuse to work with any organisations that can be compelled under the PATRIOT Act (about 98% of tech companies).

Also see: Kim DotCom. Broke no laws in New Zealand, will eventually be extradited for a civil matter. He's delayed it a long time though.

Meh they was extradite him asap now that he supports Russia, is anti vax, and spreads China propaganda.

> Does Glassdoor actually have any business operations or webservers in NZ that are subject to this order?

The court order itself is from a california court. They can't just tell that court to fuck off.

But why is a US court telling Glassdoor to do something because of a New Zealand law?

It’s a great question. I don’t know the answer, but I have a sneaking suspicion. Something something Kim Dotcom? There must be some treaty…

Congress already passed a law to prevent foreign libel judgements (well, ones which wouldn't pass 1st amendment muster), from being enforceable by US courts.

And now we just have US judges deciding they should apply NZ law without applying the 1st Amendment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act?wprov=sfla1

I think maybe this is because the user who left the review is a New Zealand national residing outside the U.S., so they do not have any first amendment rights. If the user was American, I think they could assert a first-amendment right to anonymous speech to prevent being identified. (Although such a right is not absolute, there is a balancing test involved: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...)

I read the ruling. It is apparently because of this law in the US statutes: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1782 which authorizes a judge to "order [some person] to produce a document or other thing for use in a proceeding in a foreign or international tribunal ... The order may be made ... upon the application of any interested person"

It is mostly up to the judge's discretion, but case law establishes 4 discretionary factors to consider: 1) whether the request is from a potential lawsuit participant, 2) nature of the tribunal 3) whether discovery can be obtained by other means, and 4)whether compliance is burdensome.

Interesting. Thanks for the research!

Please stop with these inane "but can we get away with ignoring the law elsewhere????" comments - it pops up every single time a US corporation is held to account for laws in a country where it violated them and it never stops being tedious.

I'm sorry, no, US corporations and people should not be held accountable to every foreign country's arbitrary laws, unless you want to set a precedent of legal action against the webservers of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for publishing information about the state of things in Xinjiang province or Uzbekistan freedom-of-press.

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