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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

While I think some of what the city says makes sense, how can a city in the US force a company in Rome to cease and desist? Even Apple might be loath to follow this order since you can't follow every city and country on earth's laws and stay in business.

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You send some law enforcement officers out to track down the people selling spaces. Shouldn't be difficult, since they're advertising their location right in the app.

Because the company is operating in the US city, of course. Would it be OK to sit in San Francisco and remotely run a service that was illegal in Rome? Of course not, Italian prosecutors would issue demands and then seek a court ruling that they would then ask US courts to enforce. This is the sort of thing that international treaties are for.

EDI for clarity, of course there are no treaties about parking spaces. But treaties usually include general provisions about courts recognizing each others' judgments in criminal and civil matters, not least to prevent cross-border financial fraud, tax evasion and so on. It's not foolproof because not all territories have treaties, eg someone based in Somalia could run an illegal internet business with relative impunity because the US has no treaties with Somalia (as far as I know). On the other hand, countries that have no criminal or commercial treaty relations with other countries tend to be hellholes.

Of course it's OK to run a service in the US that might be illegal abroad. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc. have all been banned, blocked, and threatened by various foreign governments, even in nominally democratic countries.

US-based Internet companies have flourished due to the relatively hands-off regulations concerning websites. To suddenly apply every foreign law that's ever been written would be a significant chilling effect on business.

Those services are not inherently illegal in other jurisdictions* for one thing, and where specific activities have been deemed illegal the operators either abide by the judgment of the courts or exit the market. Case in point: Google allowing EU citizens to apply for delisting of privacy-infringing search results in accordance with EU data protection laws.

* I'm not sure about places like North Korea, but trying to offer services there would be embargoed by domestic sanctions in any case.

Google is a huge multinational company with sufficient nexus in the EU (specifically France) to fall under the jurisdiction of that ruling. This sounds like an app developed by a small team, physically and legally located far outside of San Francisco. If the city tried to enforce a judgment against them, it should be laughed out of court.

I'm not sure why so many here are so quick to throw the hackers under the bus as soon as they agree with the government's demands. This kind of thing could happen to anyone, and ruin any controversial startup.

If you're doing business somewhere, as ParkingMonkey is in SF, then there's sufficient nexus for them to come under the jurisdiction of that place.

So what if it's a small team offering this service remotely? What stops them deploying this in their home town of Rome? And what makes you so sure that claims against them would be laughed out of court? True, any judgment against them would take a long time to enforce, hence the city exploring the more practical route of asking Apple to cease enabling their activity. But cross-border litigation happens all the time.

I don't think that's what he meant.

He meant running a business, from SF, whose primary activity takes place in Rome, and was also illegal in Rome.

Not just running a business from SF that's illegal in Rome.

I've seen fliers posted in San Francisco. They are obviously operating here in some fashion.

>you can't follow every city and country on earth's laws and stay in business.

If you are unable to follow a city or county's laws, then you either need to go about trying to change those laws in that city or country, or not operate there. They released an app specifically to do something that is not legal in a specific city - look at that twitter post.

You can't do something illegal in one city just because it's legal elsewhere - why should an app be allowed to?

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