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A hypothetical: Company A is in country X and company B is in country Y. Country X declares on behalf of company A that company B be blocked from searches world

A hypothetical: Company A is in country X and company B is in country Y. Country X declares on behalf of company A that company B be blocked from searches worldwide (including country Y). Country Y declares on behalf of company B that company B cannot be blocked from searches (at least in country Y). Who wins in the global context? Whichever can/will fine the most? Does this give benefits to the overly-regulating country/region and is that what we want? Another hypothetical question: Can Canada require some retailer in the US to remove another non-Canadian company's products in the US just because the retailer and a competing company both have presence in Canada?

bradleyjg 9y ago
Ultimately one company can't do business in, and be subject to the jurisdiction of, two countries whose laws require them to do opposite things. If push really came to shove Google would leave Canada--no offices, no ad sales, no shipping physical product there. Maybe even put a clause in their ToS saying that their products couldn't be used from Canada. If they did all that and Canadian courts still tried to fine it or award damages against it then other countries' courts would refuse to enforce those rulings.
- kodablah 9y ago
  I consider this the nuclear option and one that is unlikely for a large corp if we're just talking about fines (as opposed to purely opposing laws as in my hypothetical). For a normal company if the ROI of their presence > the negative ROI of complying with orders, they will remain. My question was more targeting the public and whether they accept that more restrictive regional rulings will win out. This also comes into play w/ recent EU rulings. With a large company, fragmenting features in location-specific ways is reasonable. But for other smaller companies, they have to weigh whether the loss of customers costs less than location-specific feature implementations. In general, with the internet, we should err on the side of lesser regulation IMO (which can appear to favor businesses over consumers). But this has been a political discussion for ages, predating globalism.
  - gordon_freeman 9y ago
    if that (the ROI of their presence > the negative ROI of complying with orders) were true, would not Google keep their business going in China? In reality, it is not easy to measure such RoIs positive or negative.
    - silver7017 9y ago
      the reason is that refusing to comply with chinese censorship laws is not a fine, it is a prison sentence.
syshum 9y ago
The bigger question is if Canada can enforce their regressive idea of Free Expression on US Service providers simply because of their presence in Canada Canada has no concept of the 1st amendment,Canada as all kinds of limits on Speech that will never be allowed under the US Constitution.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- lowbloodsugar 9y ago
  Google could comply with the Canadian court. I hope someone in the US sues them for it. Deliberately removing a site from US searches, or from searches hosted in the US is clearly an abuse of its position and unlawful. And then we can have the US Supreme Court decide whether or not the US Constitution applies to Google, or if Iran's does.
  - havetocharge 9y ago
    Why do you hope that an entity gets sued for something that they have not done yet?
    - lowbloodsugar 9y ago
      Legal precedent.
- pulse7 9y ago
  If Google doesn't remove this Canadian website from global searches, Canada can force Google to leave the Canadian market and even block google.com in Canada. This - of course - will not happen any time soon...
  - gpm 9y ago
    > block google.com in Canada Is there precedent for ordering ISPs to block a domain like this in Canada? I note that we've always been able to access sites like pirate bay.
_delirium 9y ago
The decision did discuss that hypothetical, though the linked article doesn't. The court said that if Google presented evidence that complying with a specific Canadian order might violate the law of a specific other country, the Canadian court would take that into account, and that might well be a good reason for modifying the order. But since in this case there wasn't any such evidence presented, they felt the hypothetical in itself wasn't sufficient reason to modify the order. edit: More extensive discussion in this comment and its follow-ups: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14657979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14657979
- kodablah 9y ago
  So to rephrase my question(s), "Who wins in the global context? Whichever can/will enforce the most?", the answer is yes? "This is enforceable worldwide until you show that it isn't" doesn't seem sane to me. It's backwards. You should not have to provide somewhere where a ruling is illegal to prevent that ruling from applying worldwide. So a government can censor a website worldwide because the company can't provide a law saying it's illegal for them to self-censor?

bradleyjg 9y ago

Ultimately one company can't do business in, and be subject to the jurisdiction of, two countries whose laws require them to do opposite things. If push really came to shove Google would leave Canada--no offices, no ad sales, no shipping physical product there. Maybe even put a clause in their ToS saying that their products couldn't be used from Canada. If they did all that and Canadian courts still tried to fine it or award damages against it then other countries' courts would refuse to enforce those rulings.

kodablah 9y ago
I consider this the nuclear option and one that is unlikely for a large corp if we're just talking about fines (as opposed to purely opposing laws as in my hypothetical). For a normal company if the ROI of their presence > the negative ROI of complying with orders, they will remain. My question was more targeting the public and whether they accept that more restrictive regional rulings will win out. This also comes into play w/ recent EU rulings. With a large company, fragmenting features in location-specific ways is reasonable. But for other smaller companies, they have to weigh whether the loss of customers costs less than location-specific feature implementations. In general, with the internet, we should err on the side of lesser regulation IMO (which can appear to favor businesses over consumers). But this has been a political discussion for ages, predating globalism.
- gordon_freeman 9y ago
  if that (the ROI of their presence > the negative ROI of complying with orders) were true, would not Google keep their business going in China? In reality, it is not easy to measure such RoIs positive or negative.
  - silver7017 9y ago
    the reason is that refusing to comply with chinese censorship laws is not a fine, it is a prison sentence.

syshum 9y ago

The bigger question is if Canada can enforce their regressive idea of Free Expression on US Service providers simply because of their presence in Canada Canada has no concept of the 1st amendment,Canada as all kinds of limits on Speech that will never be allowed under the US Constitution.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lowbloodsugar 9y ago
Google could comply with the Canadian court. I hope someone in the US sues them for it. Deliberately removing a site from US searches, or from searches hosted in the US is clearly an abuse of its position and unlawful. And then we can have the US Supreme Court decide whether or not the US Constitution applies to Google, or if Iran's does.
- havetocharge 9y ago
  Why do you hope that an entity gets sued for something that they have not done yet?
  - lowbloodsugar 9y ago
    Legal precedent.
pulse7 9y ago
If Google doesn't remove this Canadian website from global searches, Canada can force Google to leave the Canadian market and even block google.com in Canada. This - of course - will not happen any time soon...
- gpm 9y ago
  > block google.com in Canada Is there precedent for ordering ISPs to block a domain like this in Canada? I note that we've always been able to access sites like pirate bay.

_delirium 9y ago

The decision did discuss that hypothetical, though the linked article doesn't. The court said that if Google presented evidence that complying with a specific Canadian order might violate the law of a specific other country, the Canadian court would take that into account, and that might well be a good reason for modifying the order. But since in this case there wasn't any such evidence presented, they felt the hypothetical in itself wasn't sufficient reason to modify the order. edit: More extensive discussion in this comment and its follow-ups: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14657979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14657979

kodablah 9y ago
So to rephrase my question(s), "Who wins in the global context? Whichever can/will enforce the most?", the answer is yes? "This is enforceable worldwide until you show that it isn't" doesn't seem sane to me. It's backwards. You should not have to provide somewhere where a ruling is illegal to prevent that ruling from applying worldwide. So a government can censor a website worldwide because the company can't provide a law saying it's illegal for them to self-censor?