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Because France can't have its cake and eat it too. It participates in international commerce, so that information makes it across borders (e.g. French newspaper

by avar 11y ago

Because France can't have its cake and eat it too. It participates in international commerce, so that information makes it across borders (e.g. French newspapers will be sold in the US), at that point France loses the ability to censor information outside their borders, as it's in a different legal jurisdiction.

saurik 11y ago
As a United States citizen, if I go to another country to do something that would be illegal on American soil, I am still committing a crime in my home country and can be subject to bring prosecuted for it when I return: unless Google is willing to exit France and close its French offices and shit down its French data centers, then they should absolutely be subject to French law everywhere, as they are a single entity operating globally. Essentially: you have the situation backwards: Google "can't have its cake and eat it too", and by "participating in international commerce" it has to abide by the laws in every jurisdiction in which it wishes to participate, not picking and choosing the laws based on where it happens to be a the moment.
- gengkev 11y ago
  I still can't fathom how the search results on Google.com ought to be controlled by the laws of every country that Google operates in. (Surely, some of those laws contradict each other.) Why should France be allowed to control what Google (an American company) does outside of France? It seems fair that the French government should get to control Google.fr. But if they don't like what's on Google.com, then they should simply block the domain, like China does with its Great Firewall or the UK does with adult websites. It's nearly tantamount to censorship, anyway. Firstly, please excuse my lack of legal knowledge. It seems to me that Google is analogous like a US citizen operating in France, where it is subject to the laws of the US and France. Why, however, should its operations in France be subject to the laws of every other country Google operates in, and vice versa?
  - tremon 11y ago
    > Why should France be allowed to control what Google (an American company) does outside of France? According to that logic, why would the US be allowed to control what BP (a British company) does in international waters, as it did with the Deepwater Horizon fiasco? Perhaps because what BP did there affected US soil and citizens? > Why should its operations in France be subject to the laws of every other country Google operates in, and vice versa? That is not a requisite for this discussion. Google aggregating and publishing information on French citizens is a French matter. If you need to frame it in legal terms, consider it an export control on personal data. Since the data owner is in France (according to EU law), the governing jurisdiction regarding that data is also French law. So if French law says that Google should no longer publish it, that applies to the local data as well as the exported copies.
    - gengkev 11y ago
      > Perhaps because what BP did there affected US soil and citizens? When a French user uses Google.com, it's they who are requesting the information. It's not as if Google is actively pushing search results from Google.com into France, like BP's oil pushed itself onto the US coast. > Since the data owner is in France (according to EU law), the governing jurisdiction regarding that data is also French law. Again, I have no legal experience with these sorts of issues, but from your argument it seems that the website owner ought to be the one who is responsible for publishing the data. Google search results are merely a reflection of that content, and that reflection is under US jurisdiction. And if France has no way to force the website owner to take down their content, then why should Google then be responsible, just because it also has operations in France?

by avar 11y ago

saurik 11y ago

As a United States citizen, if I go to another country to do something that would be illegal on American soil, I am still committing a crime in my home country and can be subject to bring prosecuted for it when I return: unless Google is willing to exit France and close its French offices and shit down its French data centers, then they should absolutely be subject to French law everywhere, as they are a single entity operating globally. Essentially: you have the situation backwards: Google "can't have its cake and eat it too", and by "participating in international commerce" it has to abide by the laws in every jurisdiction in which it wishes to participate, not picking and choosing the laws based on where it happens to be a the moment.

gengkev 11y ago
I still can't fathom how the search results on Google.com ought to be controlled by the laws of every country that Google operates in. (Surely, some of those laws contradict each other.) Why should France be allowed to control what Google (an American company) does outside of France? It seems fair that the French government should get to control Google.fr. But if they don't like what's on Google.com, then they should simply block the domain, like China does with its Great Firewall or the UK does with adult websites. It's nearly tantamount to censorship, anyway. Firstly, please excuse my lack of legal knowledge. It seems to me that Google is analogous like a US citizen operating in France, where it is subject to the laws of the US and France. Why, however, should its operations in France be subject to the laws of every other country Google operates in, and vice versa?
- tremon 11y ago
  > Why should France be allowed to control what Google (an American company) does outside of France? According to that logic, why would the US be allowed to control what BP (a British company) does in international waters, as it did with the Deepwater Horizon fiasco? Perhaps because what BP did there affected US soil and citizens? > Why should its operations in France be subject to the laws of every other country Google operates in, and vice versa? That is not a requisite for this discussion. Google aggregating and publishing information on French citizens is a French matter. If you need to frame it in legal terms, consider it an export control on personal data. Since the data owner is in France (according to EU law), the governing jurisdiction regarding that data is also French law. So if French law says that Google should no longer publish it, that applies to the local data as well as the exported copies.
  - gengkev 11y ago
    > Perhaps because what BP did there affected US soil and citizens? When a French user uses Google.com, it's they who are requesting the information. It's not as if Google is actively pushing search results from Google.com into France, like BP's oil pushed itself onto the US coast. > Since the data owner is in France (according to EU law), the governing jurisdiction regarding that data is also French law. Again, I have no legal experience with these sorts of issues, but from your argument it seems that the website owner ought to be the one who is responsible for publishing the data. Google search results are merely a reflection of that content, and that reflection is under US jurisdiction. And if France has no way to force the website owner to take down their content, then why should Google then be responsible, just because it also has operations in France?