13 ms·

Google can be forced to pull results globally, Canada supreme court rules

69 points by fmihaila 9y ago

justherefortart 9y ago
Terrible ruling, do they even understand how the internet works? Oh well, when you're a global company, this is the BS you have to deal with.
- IAmEveryone 9y ago
  Are you saying it's impossible for Google to block some results globally? Because even if I may agree with the sentiment, I don't see how technology is the problem here–differences in law are. And if technology were the problem, that'd be the weakest possible argument. Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with.
  - AlgorithmicTime 9y ago
    It's not impossible for Google to do, it's unjust for one nation to regulate the conduct of a company in every country.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Whose society? Whose democracy? The fundamental argument for democracy’s legitimacy is that citizens can (theoretically) influence policy. You don’t get to vote in foreign countries, but they get to censor your view of the internet? We wouldn’t even be talking about Russian election meddling if Russia had global internet censorship power.
  - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
    > "Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with." Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters. Invoking 'the legitimacy of process' really makes me cringe here as it's undoubtedly the exact sort of logic that led people to let religious institutions hold back the world for centuries. And that rule was not authoritarian in practice, even if it may have been in law. Poll the masses of the time and you'd see a democratic consensus for most of these incredibly backwards decisions that held society back. So to me the question is does a court in country A have a right to demand that a company in country B behave differently in country C? Is this a reasonable restriction of freedom? To me that seems to be a resounding no. Perhaps you can argue there are good reasons for this, but please do so in means other than invoking some appeal to 'legitimacy', whatever that's supposed to mean.
    - IAmEveryone 9y ago
      > Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters What a useless platitude... Any government anywhere reduces someone's freedom in some way. Yet not no society has decided to forgo this mechanisms in the pursuit of pure "freedom". If you actually believe in anarchistic utopias...fine. You're wrong, but many people are. But otherwise simply screaming freedom, freedom just isn't an argument.
  - Mononokay 9y ago
    It's not impossible, just stupid.
- Tyr42 9y ago
  I'd say that yes, they do. There's little point in removing the results from google.ca and not google.com.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    There's little point in removing search results for DataLink from Google results worldwide when they could enjoin DataLink from selling any of the products in question. According to the article, Google is not even a party in the lawsuit.
jpiasetz 9y ago
This has already been blocked by a US court https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-court-sides-with-google-against-canadian-de-indexing-order/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-court-sides-with-google-aga... so it's in the BC court to get modified.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  False according to the article you cited - Google could go to court in Canada with a request... as it always could. One can request anything, almost, in a court, or sue anyone. But can you win.
- s2g 9y ago
  > threatens free speech on the global internet," wrote Judge Edward Davila of the US District Court for Northern California. Really, pulling listings for a counterfeit product is a free speech issue? That's dumb.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Google initially de-indexed 345 specific webpages associated with Datalink on google.ca. Equustek then sought an injunction to stop Google from displaying any part of the Datalink websites on any of its search results worldwide. Google already agreed to pull the listings. It's when they wanted the whole website removed that they pushed back.
mattsfrey 9y ago
This needs to be rejected whole sale. One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. The censorship issues that have been cropping up lately in these regards are appalling. The "hate speech" legislature of many EU nations comes to mind. If that insanity were to be enforced "world wide" it's seriously time for new service providers to step up that aren't so money hungry for those markets to capitulate.
- John_KZ 9y ago
  Exactly. Google should have subsidiaries in each nation it operates and obey the local law - nothing more and nothing less. Canadia courts should not have an effect on Mexico, and Iranian courts should not have an effect on the US. Google can sell/offer it's services anywhere as long as it's legal.
  - ksk 9y ago
    Google doesn't want that because not every subsidiary would be profitable, and they would have to pay local taxes in every country they have an office/employ people/generate revenue.
  - tw04 9y ago
    So if Google operates a subsidiary in China, they should be completely immune from a lawsuit in the US, if say, they sell your private personal info to the highest bidder in that nation? I don't see how that could be abused...
    - jerf 9y ago
      Your question at the moment is ill-defined. Carefully expand out the nationalities of the "you" who is buying the info, the nationalities of the person whom the info is about, the nationality of the subsidiary from which the information is being purchased, and the nationality under which you believe they should be suable. ("Jurisdiction", if you prefer, may replace "nationality".) There's a lot of combinations in there, and I don't think conversation can be profitable had without being clear. It's fine to fill it in with variables, too, I'm not asking for a concrete binding, but at the very least your question as I read it now is missing whose information is being sold. (Also note the ONLY thing I'm saying here is that you need to be more clear. I am not making any claims of my own at this time, because before I can have an opinion about an answer to a question, there needs to be a question.)
asdfologist 9y ago
Is this even enforceable?
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >Is this even enforceable? You mean practically or legally? The actual California sentence makes it unenforceable legally (in the US): https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/google-v-equustek-united-states-federal-court-declares-canadian-court-order-unenforceable https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/google-v-equustek-united... It should be actually marked [2017], however.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  No it is not enforceable and rather silly.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  Google sells over $2B worth of advertising to Canadians every year, plus a bunch of phones and other services. If they're not willing to abandon that revenue, it's certainly very enforceable.
  - gpm 9y ago
    Not to mention 3 offices with a good number of employees between them. Some very high profile (e.g. Geoffrey Hinton).
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Depends. What happens to Google's worldwide revenue when they set the precedent of removing information based on one country's legal findings. They have previously shut down most of their services in China, which seems like it would be a bigger market.
ksk 9y ago
Its interesting that Google is making a 'freedom of expression' argument when they themselves heavily censor YouTube content. Google controls the platform their users use, and the Government controls the 'platform' that both companies and users use. I suppose nobody cares about the users in both cases.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Google has left the content and is paying the infrastructure cost for the content. No advertisers so they demonetized. That is not the same as censoring.
  - ksk 9y ago
    > That is not the same as censoring. That is just one case. There are other cases of youtube/google banning peoples accounts. In any case, the person I replied to was equating de-indexing with censoring.
- raldi 9y ago
  Anyone whose video is taken down by YouTube is free to host it themselves. On their own servers, they're free to express themselves. Google, similarly, wants the freedom to express itself on its own servers.
- eviltandem 9y ago
  Google is allowed to host or not whatever they want. They can do it wherever they want. They are not a government. A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally? That's scary/stupid.
  - ksk 9y ago
    Actually, they are not allowed to do whatever they want. Nobody is, but okay, believe that if you may. >A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally? If Google had individual companies in individual countries, with no data (Google's property) being shared, you might have a point. Its a bit more complicated than you make it sound. > That's scary/stupid I believe that things seem less scary or stupid if you take the time to understand them.
turc1656 9y ago
So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? What do they do then? I assume that since the US/other court wouldn't be forcing them, they would default to pulling it since Canada can apparently force them to do so, so pulling the data is mandatory in Canada but "voluntary" for the rest of the world. Far more importantly, a single country is now censoring the speech of companies globally. That's a truly astounding verdict to issue in a court of law. What about the sovereignty of all other nations?
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? More interesting is when one sovereignty prohibits and imposes sanctions on behavior mandated with sanctions for non-compliance by another sovereignty. With various states adopting broad mandates for data retention while others are adopting mandates for removal, there are likely going to be circumstances where those conflict.
  - 8note 9y ago
    that seems pretty simple, really: the company chooses one jurisdiction to operate in
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  > So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? The endpoint of all this, which I now believe is basically inevitable in the long run, is Balkanization of the internet: eventually, Google and/or Canadian ISPs will only let Canadian users reach google.ca (with its modified results), and not google.com. The same will go for every other country. This is the only way to square the two opposing aims of not letting countries censor the internal globally, but still let them have sovereignty within their borders and have their decisions enforced. I'm not happy about that, but I don't see any other way around the issue. Continuing with the status quo essentially means sovereignty is dead and everyone now just has America's speech laws whether they like it or not. Even if that's what HN wants, it's just not going to happen.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
OMG, no. This is ridiculous and I love Canada.
Nomentatus 9y ago
Yes, the Canadian courts understand precisely how the internet works... through Canadian ISPs who can be forced block traffic from some companies and not others. The point of the ruling could be summarized this way: "If you wish to do business in Canada, with a web business that's visible in Canada, then there are certain practices you can't be guilty of elsewhere or in general." This isn't new. For example, it is commonplace for governments to forbid domestic contracts with businesses who, elsewhere in the world, employ bribery in their ordinary course of business. Same general concept here. Don't be too surprised if tactics like this emerge elsewhere to combat online gambling, for example, since gamblers and online gambling companies have been adept at getting around superficial blocks. It's also commonplace to allow lawsuits in the U.S. that seek to penalize governments and other institutions for conduct that happened outside the U.S., but affected people in the U.S. A previous parallel issue in Canada concerns the publication of Federal Election results; I don't know how energetic Canada has been in enforcing it lately, but the idea was to not allow Canadian media or ISPs to facilitate publishing any election results outside a given Province until the whole country had voted, since voters in the West might not even go to the polls if they knew that the election had already been decided by votes in the East. (Canada spans a lot of time zones.) Given the difficulty of limiting information exchange over the internet there aren't many alternatives to rulings that take into consideration a company's conduct elsewhere before allowing them to freely communicate in one's own country. Whether you like the specific reason (trigger) for this principle being invoked is an entirely different question I don't address here; but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable. It's also interesting to think about the controversial Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in the U.S. in this regard.
- gruez 9y ago
  >but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable. sounds great and all until oppressive regimes use this to do censor content they don't like. how long until russia/china/iran sends a rubberstampped a court order to censor a politcal candidate's advertisements because [made up reason]?.
  - Analemma_ 9y ago
    They're going to do that anyway. Why should Canada abandon its own national sovereignty because of the actions of dictators on the other side of the world that would happen regardless?
lovetrump 9y ago
Let's break the Internet, one law at a time....
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
quantumofmalice 9y ago
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" -- Andrew Jackson (apocryphal)
mcguire 9y ago
So, Company A sues Company B. The Canadian courts enjoin Company B from selling the products in question. Company B ignores the injunction. The Canadian courts, because they can't think of anything better to do, request Google to remove all evidence of Company B from their results. One wonders if Bing/DDG/etc. also received such requests? (Apparently not (https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.com); https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.co... the datatechgateways link doesn't seem to be in Google's results.)

69 points by fmihaila 9y ago

Terrible ruling, do they even understand how the internet works? Oh well, when you're a global company, this is the BS you have to deal with.

IAmEveryone 9y ago
Are you saying it's impossible for Google to block some results globally? Because even if I may agree with the sentiment, I don't see how technology is the problem here–differences in law are. And if technology were the problem, that'd be the weakest possible argument. Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with.
- AlgorithmicTime 9y ago
  It's not impossible for Google to do, it's unjust for one nation to regulate the conduct of a company in every country.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Whose society? Whose democracy? The fundamental argument for democracy’s legitimacy is that citizens can (theoretically) influence policy. You don’t get to vote in foreign countries, but they get to censor your view of the internet? We wouldn’t even be talking about Russian election meddling if Russia had global internet censorship power.
- TangoTrotFox 9y ago
  > "Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with." Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters. Invoking 'the legitimacy of process' really makes me cringe here as it's undoubtedly the exact sort of logic that led people to let religious institutions hold back the world for centuries. And that rule was not authoritarian in practice, even if it may have been in law. Poll the masses of the time and you'd see a democratic consensus for most of these incredibly backwards decisions that held society back. So to me the question is does a court in country A have a right to demand that a company in country B behave differently in country C? Is this a reasonable restriction of freedom? To me that seems to be a resounding no. Perhaps you can argue there are good reasons for this, but please do so in means other than invoking some appeal to 'legitimacy', whatever that's supposed to mean.
  - IAmEveryone 9y ago
    > Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters What a useless platitude... Any government anywhere reduces someone's freedom in some way. Yet not no society has decided to forgo this mechanisms in the pursuit of pure "freedom". If you actually believe in anarchistic utopias...fine. You're wrong, but many people are. But otherwise simply screaming freedom, freedom just isn't an argument.
- Mononokay 9y ago
  It's not impossible, just stupid.
Tyr42 9y ago
I'd say that yes, they do. There's little point in removing the results from google.ca and not google.com.
- mcguire 9y ago
  There's little point in removing search results for DataLink from Google results worldwide when they could enjoin DataLink from selling any of the products in question. According to the article, Google is not even a party in the lawsuit.

jpiasetz 9y ago

This has already been blocked by a US court https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-court-sides-with-google-against-canadian-de-indexing-order/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-court-sides-with-google-aga... so it's in the BC court to get modified.

Nomentatus 9y ago
False according to the article you cited - Google could go to court in Canada with a request... as it always could. One can request anything, almost, in a court, or sue anyone. But can you win.
s2g 9y ago
> threatens free speech on the global internet," wrote Judge Edward Davila of the US District Court for Northern California. Really, pulling listings for a counterfeit product is a free speech issue? That's dumb.
- sp332 9y ago
  Google initially de-indexed 345 specific webpages associated with Datalink on google.ca. Equustek then sought an injunction to stop Google from displaying any part of the Datalink websites on any of its search results worldwide. Google already agreed to pull the listings. It's when they wanted the whole website removed that they pushed back.

mattsfrey 9y ago

This needs to be rejected whole sale. One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. The censorship issues that have been cropping up lately in these regards are appalling. The "hate speech" legislature of many EU nations comes to mind. If that insanity were to be enforced "world wide" it's seriously time for new service providers to step up that aren't so money hungry for those markets to capitulate.

John_KZ 9y ago
Exactly. Google should have subsidiaries in each nation it operates and obey the local law - nothing more and nothing less. Canadia courts should not have an effect on Mexico, and Iranian courts should not have an effect on the US. Google can sell/offer it's services anywhere as long as it's legal.
- ksk 9y ago
  Google doesn't want that because not every subsidiary would be profitable, and they would have to pay local taxes in every country they have an office/employ people/generate revenue.
- tw04 9y ago
  So if Google operates a subsidiary in China, they should be completely immune from a lawsuit in the US, if say, they sell your private personal info to the highest bidder in that nation? I don't see how that could be abused...
  - jerf 9y ago
    Your question at the moment is ill-defined. Carefully expand out the nationalities of the "you" who is buying the info, the nationalities of the person whom the info is about, the nationality of the subsidiary from which the information is being purchased, and the nationality under which you believe they should be suable. ("Jurisdiction", if you prefer, may replace "nationality".) There's a lot of combinations in there, and I don't think conversation can be profitable had without being clear. It's fine to fill it in with variables, too, I'm not asking for a concrete binding, but at the very least your question as I read it now is missing whose information is being sold. (Also note the ONLY thing I'm saying here is that you need to be more clear. I am not making any claims of my own at this time, because before I can have an opinion about an answer to a question, there needs to be a question.)

asdfologist 9y ago

Is this even enforceable?

jaclaz 9y ago
>Is this even enforceable? You mean practically or legally? The actual California sentence makes it unenforceable legally (in the US): https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/google-v-equustek-united-states-federal-court-declares-canadian-court-order-unenforceable https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/google-v-equustek-united... It should be actually marked [2017], however.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
No it is not enforceable and rather silly.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
Google sells over $2B worth of advertising to Canadians every year, plus a bunch of phones and other services. If they're not willing to abandon that revenue, it's certainly very enforceable.
- gpm 9y ago
  Not to mention 3 offices with a good number of employees between them. Some very high profile (e.g. Geoffrey Hinton).
- mcguire 9y ago
  Depends. What happens to Google's worldwide revenue when they set the precedent of removing information based on one country's legal findings. They have previously shut down most of their services in China, which seems like it would be a bigger market.

ksk 9y ago

Its interesting that Google is making a 'freedom of expression' argument when they themselves heavily censor YouTube content. Google controls the platform their users use, and the Government controls the 'platform' that both companies and users use. I suppose nobody cares about the users in both cases.

jacksmith21006 9y ago
Google has left the content and is paying the infrastructure cost for the content. No advertisers so they demonetized. That is not the same as censoring.
- ksk 9y ago
  > That is not the same as censoring. That is just one case. There are other cases of youtube/google banning peoples accounts. In any case, the person I replied to was equating de-indexing with censoring.
raldi 9y ago
Anyone whose video is taken down by YouTube is free to host it themselves. On their own servers, they're free to express themselves. Google, similarly, wants the freedom to express itself on its own servers.
eviltandem 9y ago
Google is allowed to host or not whatever they want. They can do it wherever they want. They are not a government. A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally? That's scary/stupid.
- ksk 9y ago
  Actually, they are not allowed to do whatever they want. Nobody is, but okay, believe that if you may. >A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally? If Google had individual companies in individual countries, with no data (Google's property) being shared, you might have a point. Its a bit more complicated than you make it sound. > That's scary/stupid I believe that things seem less scary or stupid if you take the time to understand them.

turc1656 9y ago

So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? What do they do then? I assume that since the US/other court wouldn't be forcing them, they would default to pulling it since Canada can apparently force them to do so, so pulling the data is mandatory in Canada but "voluntary" for the rest of the world. Far more importantly, a single country is now censoring the speech of companies globally. That's a truly astounding verdict to issue in a court of law. What about the sovereignty of all other nations?

dragonwriter 9y ago
> So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? More interesting is when one sovereignty prohibits and imposes sanctions on behavior mandated with sanctions for non-compliance by another sovereignty. With various states adopting broad mandates for data retention while others are adopting mandates for removal, there are likely going to be circumstances where those conflict.
- 8note 9y ago
  that seems pretty simple, really: the company chooses one jurisdiction to operate in
Analemma_ 9y ago
> So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? The endpoint of all this, which I now believe is basically inevitable in the long run, is Balkanization of the internet: eventually, Google and/or Canadian ISPs will only let Canadian users reach google.ca (with its modified results), and not google.com. The same will go for every other country. This is the only way to square the two opposing aims of not letting countries censor the internal globally, but still let them have sovereignty within their borders and have their decisions enforced. I'm not happy about that, but I don't see any other way around the issue. Continuing with the status quo essentially means sovereignty is dead and everyone now just has America's speech laws whether they like it or not. Even if that's what HN wants, it's just not going to happen.

jacksmith21006 9y ago

OMG, no. This is ridiculous and I love Canada.

Nomentatus 9y ago

Yes, the Canadian courts understand precisely how the internet works... through Canadian ISPs who can be forced block traffic from some companies and not others. The point of the ruling could be summarized this way: "If you wish to do business in Canada, with a web business that's visible in Canada, then there are certain practices you can't be guilty of elsewhere or in general." This isn't new. For example, it is commonplace for governments to forbid domestic contracts with businesses who, elsewhere in the world, employ bribery in their ordinary course of business. Same general concept here. Don't be too surprised if tactics like this emerge elsewhere to combat online gambling, for example, since gamblers and online gambling companies have been adept at getting around superficial blocks. It's also commonplace to allow lawsuits in the U.S. that seek to penalize governments and other institutions for conduct that happened outside the U.S., but affected people in the U.S. A previous parallel issue in Canada concerns the publication of Federal Election results; I don't know how energetic Canada has been in enforcing it lately, but the idea was to not allow Canadian media or ISPs to facilitate publishing any election results outside a given Province until the whole country had voted, since voters in the West might not even go to the polls if they knew that the election had already been decided by votes in the East. (Canada spans a lot of time zones.) Given the difficulty of limiting information exchange over the internet there aren't many alternatives to rulings that take into consideration a company's conduct elsewhere before allowing them to freely communicate in one's own country. Whether you like the specific reason (trigger) for this principle being invoked is an entirely different question I don't address here; but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable. It's also interesting to think about the controversial Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in the U.S. in this regard.

gruez 9y ago
>but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable. sounds great and all until oppressive regimes use this to do censor content they don't like. how long until russia/china/iran sends a rubberstampped a court order to censor a politcal candidate's advertisements because [made up reason]?.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  They're going to do that anyway. Why should Canada abandon its own national sovereignty because of the actions of dictators on the other side of the world that would happen regardless?

lovetrump 9y ago

Let's break the Internet, one law at a time....

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

quantumofmalice 9y ago

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" -- Andrew Jackson (apocryphal)

mcguire 9y ago

So, Company A sues Company B. The Canadian courts enjoin Company B from selling the products in question. Company B ignores the injunction. The Canadian courts, because they can't think of anything better to do, request Google to remove all evidence of Company B from their results. One wonders if Bing/DDG/etc. also received such requests? (Apparently not (https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.com); https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.co... the datatechgateways link doesn't seem to be in Google's results.)