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> International websites have to respect local laws. No way. If I, a US citizen, publish a website hosted in the US that is critical of the Turkish president,

> International websites have to respect local laws. No way. If I, a US citizen, publish a website hosted in the US that is critical of the Turkish president, should a Turkish court be able to compel me to take it down or block access from Turkey? What if I'm Israeli and I publish open source software, source and binary hosted in Israel, that is against US hacking laws. Should a US court be able to order an Israeli to stop doing something that is legal in Israel? (Both of these are hypothetical, I don't know if there are such laws.) If I have no business in a country (or pseudo country like EU) they should have no jurisdiction over me. I shouldn't have to comply with every crazy authoritarian, free speech suppressing, restricted use country in the world. If countries want to prosecute their own citizens for visiting my site, consuming my content, or using my software, that is their business. Now if I do business in that country... that is different, then they might have some legal jurisdiction over me.

jhasse 9y ago
Another example: If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?
- Pinckney 9y ago
  Other countries can try to block that content, or they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > Other countries can try to block that content Opens the door for censorship. > they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Impossible without more surveillance > Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order? Let's say you want to travel to the country at some point in the future.
  - detuur 9y ago
    > try to block Excellent phrasing. They can try. And they'll fail. Blocking is trivially easy to avoid and circumvent. As long as there's no jurisdiction, a country can't take any action against a criminal site, it can only take steps to protect its population from harmful outside influence, which is by blocking. The offenders remain free and often unidentified. But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. It gives legal ground to investigate the involved persons, it gives permission to hack the website, it gives permission to hijack it and replace it by honeypots. It gives the weapons to not just temporarily silence criminals, but to destroy their enterprise and bring them to justice. Remote jurisdiction is the base of modern countermeasures against websites and servers involved in drugs, child pornography, terrorism, and human trafficking. Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing.
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      > But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. That isn't what jurisdiction means. You're describing the digital equivalent of covert operations in a foreign country. > Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing. It would work perfectly well to publish free open source scanning software and allow your citizens to voluntarily use it if they want to be "protected" from such things. Unless your citizens are the perpetrators rather than the victims, but in that case you haven't got a jurisdictional problem.
      - detuur 9y ago
        Covert operations are by definition extra-judicial. They knowingly break laws and international agreements and rely on diplomacy to take care of it later. That's not what's happening with offensive action against criminal sites. If you run a gambling website on a local server without a proper permit in many countries, you'll get sued first. If you don't take down the website when a judge orders you to, police will try to move on to confiscating the server (with a warrant) and/or blocking access (with a warrant). If you evade those measures, eventually computer crime units will move on to hacking into your server (with a warrant) to locate and disable it. It's simple enforcement of the law. Hacking is an extreme measure, but not extra-judicial. Even when servers are abroad and regular confiscation isn't an option, often local law enforcement will seize servers on behalf of foreign jurisdiction. Only when local police is unwilling to cooperate will hacking be used. And it's used all the time, with the appropriate warrants and within the bounds of law. Don't conflate this with NSA hacking which is very extra-judicial and most definitely illegal. The notion of "voluntary protection" is ridiculous. "Here, citizen, use this app to be warned when you're entering areas with drug violence. Now you're protected." Law enforcement isn't only supposed to protect citizens, but also to combat criminality. Many materials are treated very differently whether you're a consumer or distributor. If criminals run an illegal gambling website, drug trading website, revenge porn website, or any other illegal website you might think of, then even under your narrow interpretation of jurisdiction it would be law enforcement's duty to shut down that website's access nationwide, and not rely on some sort of bullshit voluntary protection.
- freech 9y ago
  > If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? Yes. > If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it? No.
- balp 9y ago
  > If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? No, they could try to convince the country to change it laws. Maybe if they think the issue is important enough blockade the country. Maybe even with help of other countries that have the same idea about the problem. But they can't prosecute a citizen of that country for doing anything legal in that country. It's possible to try to change the other countries laws using diplomacy.
- klibertp 9y ago
  Yes and yes. Other countries can ban their citizens from accessing the child porn. They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. This is obvious. Whether it's about porn, dissident political opinions or my cooking blog makes no difference. Repeat after me: your country has no right to order citizens of other countries who live outside of your country to do anything. And vice versa, of course. On a more personal note, here - a bit east from you - there was a time when your government could order people around, and it did. We don't want to repeat that, which is what you're calling for. There's a lot of blood behind some countries becoming independent. Show some respect for that. That some countries could use their independence to allow child porn is unfortunate. I still won't support invading them over it. You need to realize that you're arguing for just that - infringing their independence - just without the tanks entering the picture (for now). Honestly, stop that. There are still people alive who remember the last time your folks did that. At the very least, let those people die out before doing it again.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. That's not what's happening though, gutenberg.org was only ordered to make the 18 books not accessible from German IPs. No one talked about a hosting ban.
    - klibertp 9y ago
      The rule is: you can't, in any way, compel citizens of other countries living outside your country to do anything. You really shouldn't even try, unless it's with the cooperation with the other country (just fill a lawsuit there!). If you do try, it's a straight path to extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, assassinations and other such joyous things. I'm not saying that it has to lead to this, but it could, it did in the past, and we've instituted a rule to prevent that. Please, honor the rules we've all agreed upon! Now, back to the issue in question. If you put a site on the Internet, you're by default giving access to it to everyone - you need to put some effort into it to make filtering traffic possible. It doesn't matter how much effort is needed - just that you have to do something. This court order tries to compel PG to do that "something". It doesn't matter, at all, how many books are involved. It doesn't matter that it's "just for German IPs". It doesn't matter how easy it is to implement. What's important is that the court tries to compel citizens of another country to do something. No matter how small it is, it's simply wrong. It shouldn't happen! The court could force ISPs in its country to filter traffic so that you can't access those books. It could make filtering these books to be hardcoded in home routers and public access points. It could, for all I care, ban the Internet in its entirety - inside your country. It cannot, and should not even try, to force PG to do anything. Now, there are exceptions to everything, established precedents, international agreements - I'm not a lawyer, I don't know if there's a legal argument which would allow the interference in other country affairs in this case. What I'm saying is that such interference, as a rule, is not allowed, supporting it should be viewed with suspicion and every argument presented should be very carefully scrutinized and verified. Again, as a rule, you don't force foreigners who never set foot on your soil to do anything. Infringing on another country sovereignty is simply a no-go (unless you have a lot of nukes, apparently, but I digress). Why is it hard to understand?
gowld 9y ago
If you have Turkish users, you ARE doing business in Turkey. That's obvious.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  If you operate a bookstore in New York City, you are doing business in the US and not Turkey. That is true even if someone from Turkey comes into your bookstore, buys one of your books and takes it home with them to Turkey. Why should the internet be any different?
Mindwipe 9y ago
Well bad news. The world doesn't and has never worked in the way you want it to. Countries generally find enforcing their laws against entities with nothing inside their borders at all a bit more hassle than it's worth, but it has never, ever been the case that they can't.

jhasse 9y ago

Another example: If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it?

Pinckney 9y ago
Other countries can try to block that content, or they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order?
- jhasse 9y ago
  > Other countries can try to block that content Opens the door for censorship. > they can try to punish their own residents for viewing it. Impossible without more surveillance > Why would residents of the permissive country comply with a foreign court order? Let's say you want to travel to the country at some point in the future.
- detuur 9y ago
  > try to block Excellent phrasing. They can try. And they'll fail. Blocking is trivially easy to avoid and circumvent. As long as there's no jurisdiction, a country can't take any action against a criminal site, it can only take steps to protect its population from harmful outside influence, which is by blocking. The offenders remain free and often unidentified. But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. It gives legal ground to investigate the involved persons, it gives permission to hack the website, it gives permission to hijack it and replace it by honeypots. It gives the weapons to not just temporarily silence criminals, but to destroy their enterprise and bring them to justice. Remote jurisdiction is the base of modern countermeasures against websites and servers involved in drugs, child pornography, terrorism, and human trafficking. Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > But when there is jurisdiction, a country can take offensive action. That isn't what jurisdiction means. You're describing the digital equivalent of covert operations in a foreign country. > Without it, the only logical way to protect your population is to erect deep-scanning firewalls and abolishing free traffic across national networks, much like China and Iran are doing. It would work perfectly well to publish free open source scanning software and allow your citizens to voluntarily use it if they want to be "protected" from such things. Unless your citizens are the perpetrators rather than the victims, but in that case you haven't got a jurisdictional problem.
    - detuur 9y ago
      Covert operations are by definition extra-judicial. They knowingly break laws and international agreements and rely on diplomacy to take care of it later. That's not what's happening with offensive action against criminal sites. If you run a gambling website on a local server without a proper permit in many countries, you'll get sued first. If you don't take down the website when a judge orders you to, police will try to move on to confiscating the server (with a warrant) and/or blocking access (with a warrant). If you evade those measures, eventually computer crime units will move on to hacking into your server (with a warrant) to locate and disable it. It's simple enforcement of the law. Hacking is an extreme measure, but not extra-judicial. Even when servers are abroad and regular confiscation isn't an option, often local law enforcement will seize servers on behalf of foreign jurisdiction. Only when local police is unwilling to cooperate will hacking be used. And it's used all the time, with the appropriate warrants and within the bounds of law. Don't conflate this with NSA hacking which is very extra-judicial and most definitely illegal. The notion of "voluntary protection" is ridiculous. "Here, citizen, use this app to be warned when you're entering areas with drug violence. Now you're protected." Law enforcement isn't only supposed to protect citizens, but also to combat criminality. Many materials are treated very differently whether you're a consumer or distributor. If criminals run an illegal gambling website, drug trading website, revenge porn website, or any other illegal website you might think of, then even under your narrow interpretation of jurisdiction it would be law enforcement's duty to shut down that website's access nationwide, and not rely on some sort of bullshit voluntary protection.
freech 9y ago
> If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? Yes. > If you're in a country where doxxing is legal, should the victims not be able to do anything against it? No.
balp 9y ago
> If you're in a country where child pornography is legal, should all other countries just accept it? No, they could try to convince the country to change it laws. Maybe if they think the issue is important enough blockade the country. Maybe even with help of other countries that have the same idea about the problem. But they can't prosecute a citizen of that country for doing anything legal in that country. It's possible to try to change the other countries laws using diplomacy.
klibertp 9y ago
Yes and yes. Other countries can ban their citizens from accessing the child porn. They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. This is obvious. Whether it's about porn, dissident political opinions or my cooking blog makes no difference. Repeat after me: your country has no right to order citizens of other countries who live outside of your country to do anything. And vice versa, of course. On a more personal note, here - a bit east from you - there was a time when your government could order people around, and it did. We don't want to repeat that, which is what you're calling for. There's a lot of blood behind some countries becoming independent. Show some respect for that. That some countries could use their independence to allow child porn is unfortunate. I still won't support invading them over it. You need to realize that you're arguing for just that - infringing their independence - just without the tanks entering the picture (for now). Honestly, stop that. There are still people alive who remember the last time your folks did that. At the very least, let those people die out before doing it again.
- jhasse 9y ago
  > They cannot ban a citizen of another country from hosting said porn if it's legal there. That's not what's happening though, gutenberg.org was only ordered to make the 18 books not accessible from German IPs. No one talked about a hosting ban.
  - klibertp 9y ago
    The rule is: you can't, in any way, compel citizens of other countries living outside your country to do anything. You really shouldn't even try, unless it's with the cooperation with the other country (just fill a lawsuit there!). If you do try, it's a straight path to extraordinary renditions, drone strikes, assassinations and other such joyous things. I'm not saying that it has to lead to this, but it could, it did in the past, and we've instituted a rule to prevent that. Please, honor the rules we've all agreed upon! Now, back to the issue in question. If you put a site on the Internet, you're by default giving access to it to everyone - you need to put some effort into it to make filtering traffic possible. It doesn't matter how much effort is needed - just that you have to do something. This court order tries to compel PG to do that "something". It doesn't matter, at all, how many books are involved. It doesn't matter that it's "just for German IPs". It doesn't matter how easy it is to implement. What's important is that the court tries to compel citizens of another country to do something. No matter how small it is, it's simply wrong. It shouldn't happen! The court could force ISPs in its country to filter traffic so that you can't access those books. It could make filtering these books to be hardcoded in home routers and public access points. It could, for all I care, ban the Internet in its entirety - inside your country. It cannot, and should not even try, to force PG to do anything. Now, there are exceptions to everything, established precedents, international agreements - I'm not a lawyer, I don't know if there's a legal argument which would allow the interference in other country affairs in this case. What I'm saying is that such interference, as a rule, is not allowed, supporting it should be viewed with suspicion and every argument presented should be very carefully scrutinized and verified. Again, as a rule, you don't force foreigners who never set foot on your soil to do anything. Infringing on another country sovereignty is simply a no-go (unless you have a lot of nukes, apparently, but I digress). Why is it hard to understand?

gowld 9y ago

If you have Turkish users, you ARE doing business in Turkey. That's obvious.

AnthonyMouse 9y ago
If you operate a bookstore in New York City, you are doing business in the US and not Turkey. That is true even if someone from Turkey comes into your bookstore, buys one of your books and takes it home with them to Turkey. Why should the internet be any different?

Mindwipe 9y ago

Well bad news. The world doesn't and has never worked in the way you want it to. Countries generally find enforcing their laws against entities with nothing inside their borders at all a bit more hassle than it's worth, but it has never, ever been the case that they can't.