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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

This is insane.

The plaintiff, Equustek Solutions Inc., says the main defendant, Morgan Jack, sells networking devices that infringe on their trademark.

The defendant sells these things online; the plaintiff wants his websites to be dereferenced from Google.

The court agreed and asked Google to remove the links on all its properties worldwide (not just google.ca).

But what does Google have to do with this?

Why does the plaintiff not go after the infringer, to shut his websites down and/or fine him and/or get him in prison?

Telling Google to remove the links (worldwide!!) is like issuing an injunction against all restaurants the world over to stop selling food to anyone called "Morgan Jack" in the remote chance it will have an effect on his business.

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This wouldn't fly in the USA:

"It is clear from the record that Google was never named as a party to the suit, was never served with process, never waived or accepted process, and never made an appearance in the suit before the expunction order was entered. Nothing in the record establishes that Google stands in privity to the commission or to Jackson. Accordingly, we hold that Google was not a party to the suit and that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter orders against Google." [1]

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07402727525/texas...

Some part of me wonders what would happen if they were to turn off Google to Canada for a day and list the judge's phone number as the person to complain to.

(Probably one very angry judge, but I wonder...)

Probably a lot of angry users, anti-trust proceedings, and a bunch of other stuff they don't want.

Sounds like something from here would apply:

"Contempt of Court includes the following behaviours:

- Fails to maintain a respectful attitude, remain silent or refrain from showing approval or disapproval of the proceeding

- Refuses or neglects to obey a subpoena

- Willfully disobeys a process or order of the Court

- Interfere with the orderly administration of justice or to impair the authority or dignity of the Court"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#Canada

Will the US extradite someone to Canada for contempt of court?

They could simply seize the assets of Google Montreal.

I imagine Google going dark in Canada would hurt Canada more than it's worth (playing out the fantasy scenario). I don't just mean search, but at this point there'll be plenty of companies that rely on Google Apps, including gmail.

Yes, but the law will generally not bend so readily to blackmail as people think it will.

Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and other global IT companies are at an advantage here because they can always pack up and move but if they start pissing off the legal system in the larger economies it may very well backfire.

For 'brick and mortar' companies such tricks are a lot harder to pull off. Also, to protect against mutual damage governments can enter into collectives which have a lot more power against multi-nationals than any single country.

If a judge orders you 'x', you can appeal but in the meantime it is usually wise do 'x', unless you've very carefully weighed the risks and any fall-out and you decide to make a stand.

It's quite possible this is a case worth doing that for.

Oh, for sure. I'm just playing out a fantasy scenario. I imagine in the google offices that making Canada dark in response would have been passed as a joke, but no-one would seriously think it. And even if they did think of it seriously, the legal team would stomp them before they could do anything.

I agree, out and out Contempt of Court.

Further, the Judge themselves is in charge of deciding whether Contempt of Court has occurred.

No possible jury to convince or appeal to, just the judge.

They can have you imprisoned in under a day.

Contempt of Court is very serious.

They can have you imprisoned in under a day.

Only if you're in their jurisdiction. And Google isn't a person to jail. And corporations have a way of making these things not attributable to any one person.

However, it would be better to state the argument given by the law professor in the article: "what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database". Find something that the judge cares about personally, and you'll find a country that opposes it. Google can also complain that it's being targetted - why not Bing? Yahoo? Any other search providers? Does Wikipedia have a page for the company? What about reseller companies, that resell the competitor - not only are they facilitators, they're witting facilitators? What about sites with user reviews? At what point do we draw the moral line about shooting the messenger?

  And Google isn't a person to jail.

Which nicely illustrates one of the major problems of having granted corporations 'legal person' status: the punishments for various crimes were originally intended to punish natural persons and have never been sufficiently adapted to punish corporations. What's a proper punishment for flagrant contempt of the court by a corporation?

  And corporations have a way of making these things not 
  attributable to any one person.

That is in fact their raison d'être.

> the punishments for various crimes were originally intended to punish natural persons and have never been sufficiently adapted to punish corporations

Good point! :)

Jail == cannot conduct business for X years?

> That is in fact their raison d'être.

This looks like an example of @ziobrando's "Bullshit asymmetry principle" in action. You whip out some bullshit (unless I'm really misunderstanding what you are saying) in a one liner with no citations, but to refute it, someone would have to talk about the history of corporations, legal theories around them, compare and contrast with societies that never developed a similar idea (an interesting take on things: http://www.amazon.com/Long-Divergence-Islamic-Held-Middle-eb... ), and so on and so forth. That's a lot more effort than simply spouting some snark.

Thank you. I have long been trying to pin down the description of, and term for, that principle. http://t.bigboxcar.com/post/87256202522/bullshit-asymmetry-p...

There's still a corollary in need of succinct definition/labeling: in context of a casual discussion, you make a fair point in a one liner with no citation, then someone criticizes it (in effect) for lacking peer-reviewed encyclopedic depth & thoroughness. (Ex.: "this car does 0 to 60MPH in 10 seconds" "uh, NO, you're not taking relativity into account! and you didn't cite any certified testing labs!" and from social context you feel compelled to elaborate on why your comment was sufficient, while the other loudly labels you a liar, ignores your objections, and marches off to disrupt other sane conversations.)

Which is why I'm not going to challenge the accusation of 'bullshit'. I don't think the principle applies here.

It does suggest I need to clarify that I believe that it is both the great strength and the great weakness of corporations.

Russia mostly uses Yandex anyway :)

Yes, how could doxxing the judge possibly backfire? /s

Contempt of the law by the judge should be a defense against contempt of court. In an ideal world, that is.

The lawyers made a compelling case that the law allows for the actions taken by the course, so the judge followed it. That's how the court system works.

I've been party to a court session where the defendant tried to pull something like that. Let's just say I would advise against it, 'career limiting move' does not even begin to describe it.

Man, I'd love to hear this story.

No doubt, but I don't think it would be appropriate to stick the knife in even further. The case was a complete victory and we ended up drafting the settlement agreement one sided. There is nothing to gain by further destroying the reputation of the other side. Live & let live. I'm fairly sure they learned their lesson ;)

I do remember making a very explicit 'note to self': Do not under any circumstances piss off a judge during a court session.

Feel free to ignore that, if you do please do blog about it.

They should delist the other guy as well so it does appear they are taking sides. Delisting the Canadian government might be worthwhile too

I think one inevitable fairly result would be many other national governments observing Google trying to use its market position in order to bully the courts and overpower the rule of law in a country, and swiftly passing legislation ordering Google's break up as a company so that it can never do it again.

That would just lead to a shareholder lawsuit and more traffic to DDG, Bing and Blekko.

Nothing. Google is not Apple or Microsoft. It's not hardware they are selling. There are many positive things but there's a big downside too: A new search engine, is a click away. No one has to sweat about it.

If 5% of the clicks actually like the new search engine, then Google would have lost 5% of it's clients in a day.

Well, it's often said around here that we should consider Google to be in the ad business, right ? Then following that logic Google is actually advertising illegal stuff by providing links to Morgan Jack's website on Google's own site.

I am not convinced by that line of thoughts, though.

> Telling Google to remove the links (worldwide!!) is like issuing an injunction against all restaurants the world over to stop selling food to anyone called "Morgan Jack" in the remote chance it will have an effect on his business.

But Google would be the only restaurant on the whole planet in that analogy.

To further the analogy - it would be like telling McDonalds to not sell food to this person but ignoring In'n'Out Burger and Burger King.

I understand the point about forcing Google to stop sellin advertising to this person. I am confused about how a disappeared person continues to pay for services from Google; why didn't anyone get a court order to force Google to release information about the infringer?

{edit: i did not downvote parent. I am not sure why parent has been downvoted}

Google isn't selling advertising to him. Their only involvement as far as I can tell is that his sites show up in organic search results.

Thanks for the clarification!

I hadn't heard about this before today and doing a bit of research it sounds like something that has been going on for years - since at least 2007 - and there has been some really dodgy practice. (But I still don't see why Google is targeted here).

http://www.rudy2.com/datalink-equustek/

And it seems that Datalink have made some effort to clarify the situation: http://1770-kf3.com/

> We would like to clarify that DataLink no longer sell/promote the following Canadian manufacturer’s products. “Equustek Solutions Inc.’s products (www.equustek.com), as listed below, are no longer distributed by Datalink:”

DL2000 DL3500 DL4000 DL4500 DL6000 DL7000 EQ7000 DL-PC DL-PCI DL-PCIe DL-PC/104 DL-STED EQ-DCM

“Customers of these products should contact Equustek directly at the website above or toll free at 1-888-387-3787"

I don't know this area so I have no idea what I need to type into a search box to get a Datalink result turning up where I should be getting an Equustek result. (And I'm trying across different search engines).

I wonder if this will eventually lead to google making use of a decentralized federated search strategy where they provide the technology to everyone who wants their site to be findable by means of google, but do not actually produce the results themselves. From a technological pov that would certainly be far more challenging than their current system, but it might make them less of a target legally.

Well Google is the only one that matters. Sure Bing and DDG exist and you can sometimes bump into a person using either of those, but for majority of the population, Google is the Internet, for better or worse.

> Well, it's often said around here that we should consider Google to be in the ad business, right ? Then following that logic Google is actually advertising illegal stuff by providing links to Morgan Jack's website on Google's own site.

Google is in the ad business in the same way a newspaper or a magazine is: Selling ads is the major source of income. Every time someone says that Google is an ad business, for calibration remind yourself that so is the New York Times.

Anyway, Google linking (in the regular results section, not ads) to the website of a given business is similar to a newspaper or magazine stating in editorial content that a certain business exists and what its address is. That is obviously not "selling ads" in any way, shape or form.

Yes, everyone would do well to remember the NYT is in the ad business too.

The issue is that a lower court issued a temporary injunction against Morgan Jack to stop selling their products in British Columbia while the issue was being sorted out at trial. Morgan Jack then disappeared "into the cloud" and continued to sell their products online, via links to their products in Google search results. Equustek then claimed that Morgan Jack was still in violation of the court order to stop selling in BC, and that's the issue that has gone to the BC Supreme Court: Is Google "doing business" in BC when it presents Morgan Jack's links to BC residents? The court ruled that under the current rules, Google is indeed doing business in BC, and can be ordered to remove links to Morgan Jack by a BC court.

Earlier, Google already agreed to remove their website, as defined by some 350 urls. But the defendant started auto generating new urls, which had to go back to the judge (I think) to be blocked. Google was fine with blocking specific urls worldwide by court order.

Now, the ruling requires google to block them, even if they change the url. That's the new upgrade that required the ruling.

How about drawing parallels to a similar situation? A child porn ring manages to stay online via using ever-changing URLs and relying on Google's indexing. Prosecutors of course go after the people maintaining the network. But Google still has a moral and legal obligation to stop indexing the network if feasible.

I'd say at the end of the day it's a matter of degree. In both situations, a content provider has been deemed illegal is leveraging Google to stay afloat. But while in one case Google's obligation seems like a no-brainer due to its heinous nature, the other elicits less passion.

Using that logic...

Russia can ban all LBGT sites on Google because it has been deemed illegal.

That's not my logic at all. The GP asked what this has to do with Google. I'm saying there are clearly scenarios where Google has a responsibility to limit access to content, even content they don't provide. In my opinion, it is not tenable to say "let the courts go after the child pornographers, but Google shouldn't be asked to block access to their content".

And notably, I'm not even arguing that Google should ever be ordered to block sites worldwide. The GP's argument has NOTHING to do with the worldwide nature, on the contrary, that it is worldwide was only parenthetical in the comment. The same argument would stand even if the decision only affected Canada. It argues against involving Google at all, and that's what I'm debating.

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