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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 censorsh

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.)
    - tw04 9y ago
      Chinese subsidiary, Chinese buyer, US citizen.
      - sp332 9y ago
        How would the Chinese subsidiary get the info about the US citizen?
      - lowbloodsugar 9y ago
        Logically, for China Google to sell your data to Chinese Buyer, then US Google must have sold your data to China Google. If it is illegal for US Google to sell data to third parties, then US Google could be sued for selling that data to China Google. However, since the USA is all about "Freedom meaning we can do what the fuck we like with your data", and not "Freedom from persecution", there's no reason that US Google couldn't do what you describe. If you were a European citizen, and it was German Google selling your data to China Google (or US Google), then that'd be a very different story. It seems odd that you're worried about China, when you live in a nation that has been proven to wiretap you by the government, and where private transactions are authorized based on information which three credit score companies store completely insecurely.
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Google does not sell your personal data. They do use to Target ads but does not leave Google.
    - sp332 9y ago
      Google might not sell data wholesale, but they do sell it retail, so to speak. If I make an ad targeting gay dog owners in NYC, and someone clicks that ad, I know that Google knows they're a gay dog owner in NYC. Google sold me that person's data.
      - Spivak 9y ago
        Or more succinctly, a lot of people don't really find a meaningful difference between selling data and selling access to or use of that data.
izacus 9y ago
So does that mean that we should punish Google when it pulls our YouTube video due to trademark concerns valid only inside US and videos with pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, pro-ISIS political slant? Or does this your idea only work for US cultural norms? Should we then start processes of getting Google out of EU, Asia? After all, a media service who distributes illegal content inside your borders, spreads US propaganda, bans your propaganda ... is dangerous right? How do we reconcile the fact that those are global services?
- kodablah 9y ago
  > Or does this your idea only work for US cultural norms? Always these false equivalences, every time. I can count on it. In this case, I'm sure GP thinks as I do, that no US court should be able to tell a company what to take down elsewhere in the world. That Google chooses to is another matter. Please please, can we stop trying to deflect the real issue with these whataboutisms?
  - tgragnato 9y ago
    In this particular case, the whole thing is probably more complicated than what it seems: it's not entirely clear that Google chooses to is another matter. As a reference: "The Digital Disruption - Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power" by Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen [http://archive.is/R13l2 http://archive.is/R13l2] In the past people interpreted the article as "US companies control a large proportion of the internet infrastructure, the government can use this as a foreign policy tool". If you're a foreigner this may not sound cool.. It is natural for a company that maintains complex and entrenched relationships with a government, to influence and being influenced, at home and abroad.
    - kodablah 9y ago
      Sure. But that doesn't change the common moral stance that one has of "X government should not be able to force a company to do things outside of X's jurisdiction" for any values of X, even if that is at odds with what currently happens today. And some people's morals may extend the quote to "if company is not headquartered in X" or "if company does not do business in X" or whatever they may think. But the conversation on the morals themselves cannot be had if all we do is replace values of X for three reasons: 1) it assumes people have inconsistent morals, and 2) no two situations are the same and 3) the conversation is diluted. To your broader point about US internet hegemony and government influence, I think it doesn't sound cool to many regardless of where they reside. If we must draw equivalence for history's sake here, one could look at the dissemination of culture over and over again and protectionist measures by the encroached upon in order to retain power, often against the will of the citizens. Over time, people will do what they want, in the meantime all most want is those with power to limit themselves. It also has value to recognize the environments that foster these cultural innovations and fight fire with fire instead of power.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. The actually do, that's inherent in the nature of sovereignty. You can eliminate the practical effect of that by adopting a single shared global sovereign regime, but that idea is controversial even in the abstract, and in concrete detail even moreso, as those who agree that such a thing is desirable disagree violently on the character that such a regime should have, and mostly view not having one as better than having the wrong one, so we are stuck in a system of multiple sovereigns.
- dsacco 9y ago
  Do you mean that sovereignty grants that authority in principle, or in actuality? If the United States doesn't enforce the demands of another country with respect to a company in its borders, the company can freely ignore those demands. That various countries choose to have treaties enforcing the demands of others seems to be less about sovereignty and more about good relations. For example, Germany ordered Project Gutenberg to remove certain books from its servers or to make them unavailable to Germans. I maintain a full mirror of Project Gutenberg and I make the banned books available to Germans. If Germany sent me a personal letter demanding I cease and desist, I'd ignore it. If the United States demanded I cease and desist on Germany's behalf, I wouldn't ignore it. But the latter doesn't seem like "Germany's sovereignty" to me.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Do you mean that sovereignty grants that authority in principle, or in actuality? Yes, both. > If the United States doesn't enforce the demands of another country with respect to a company in its borders, the company can freely ignore those demands. The authority to legislate and the ability to impose consequences are two different things. It is, for instance, indisputable that the US has authority to criinalize tax fraud by it's citizens occuring within the US, but if a tax fraudster escapes to a foreign country with all their possessions before the US catches them, and that country is uninterested in assisting the US, the US may well find it practically impossible to enforce sanctions without engaging in interstate conflict. The only difference with the situation at hand is that an act committee overseas by a foreign entity is more likely to be difficult to sanction since flight for the purpose of evasion is less likely to be necessary (OTOH, if the offender has any contact with the offended jurisdiction, they are still at risk, and being g ofrced to avoid the jurisdiction to avoid sanctions may itself be a kind of sanction.)
GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
So this is lawfare between a company that makes something and a company purported to have stolen their design. I guess the question that really would make it interesting is what country is the purported design thief in?
hunter23 9y ago
I think it's actually quite common for a country to dictate what it's citizens and companies can do outside of its borders. For example, * A US company can be prosecuted on corruption charges if it bribes an official out of its borders. This is even if what they do is not considered bribery in the country itself; you are bound to the US law even when you are doing business outside of it. The US has used this approach to clamp down corruption cases of companies in developing countries. * Trade embargos work this way. We have an embargo on Iran and ban US based companies from doing business with them, even if its through a subsidiary that operates outside our borders * US citizens are required to pay taxes when they live in another country (we are the only country to tax globally) * As a US traveler, you have to follow some US laws even when you are in other countries. The US has used this to combat sex tourism. So while it may be easy to go around the country's age of consent laws while you are visting, you can still be prosecuted in the US. This is to prevent child sex trafficking etc. Nomentatus has listed other examples in this thread. Enforcement, on the other hand is pretty difficult. I don't see how Canada force Google to do things outside of it's borders - the worst they can do is kick Youtube out their country.
- endangered 9y ago
  * That is a US company * The ban affects US companies * The taxes affect US citizens * The laws affect US citizens This has nothing to do with this decision. What Canada is aiming to do is to force a non-Canadian company to follow Canadian law even if it does not operate at all in Canada.
  - lovich 9y ago
    It's interacting with Canadian citizenship and being paid by Canadian companies for advertising. If it's literally doing no operations inside of Canada then they have nothing to worry about because Canada couldn't do anything to them. Its pretty hypocritical of companies to rely on local laws to protect them but then act like all their customers on the internet don't exist in any real space and aren't under a nation states juridisction. I'd prefer a completely free internet, but you don't get to have it both ways
8note 9y ago
Nothing requires Google to do business in Canada, and it's not like this is the first Canadian law to extend to things that happen internationally.
flukus 9y ago
> One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. We crossed this bridge quite a while ago, it's only the direction that's changing. If I hacked a server in the US from the UK guess where I'm being charged? If I send drugs from Canada to the US guess where I'm being charged? These aren't hypotheticals, they've happened before. I agree it needs to be changed, but this was foreseeable a long time ago and nobody cared.

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.)
  - tw04 9y ago
    Chinese subsidiary, Chinese buyer, US citizen.
    - sp332 9y ago
      How would the Chinese subsidiary get the info about the US citizen?
    - lowbloodsugar 9y ago
      Logically, for China Google to sell your data to Chinese Buyer, then US Google must have sold your data to China Google. If it is illegal for US Google to sell data to third parties, then US Google could be sued for selling that data to China Google. However, since the USA is all about "Freedom meaning we can do what the fuck we like with your data", and not "Freedom from persecution", there's no reason that US Google couldn't do what you describe. If you were a European citizen, and it was German Google selling your data to China Google (or US Google), then that'd be a very different story. It seems odd that you're worried about China, when you live in a nation that has been proven to wiretap you by the government, and where private transactions are authorized based on information which three credit score companies store completely insecurely.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Google does not sell your personal data. They do use to Target ads but does not leave Google.
  - sp332 9y ago
    Google might not sell data wholesale, but they do sell it retail, so to speak. If I make an ad targeting gay dog owners in NYC, and someone clicks that ad, I know that Google knows they're a gay dog owner in NYC. Google sold me that person's data.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      Or more succinctly, a lot of people don't really find a meaningful difference between selling data and selling access to or use of that data.

izacus 9y ago

So does that mean that we should punish Google when it pulls our YouTube video due to trademark concerns valid only inside US and videos with pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, pro-ISIS political slant? Or does this your idea only work for US cultural norms? Should we then start processes of getting Google out of EU, Asia? After all, a media service who distributes illegal content inside your borders, spreads US propaganda, bans your propaganda ... is dangerous right? How do we reconcile the fact that those are global services?

kodablah 9y ago
> Or does this your idea only work for US cultural norms? Always these false equivalences, every time. I can count on it. In this case, I'm sure GP thinks as I do, that no US court should be able to tell a company what to take down elsewhere in the world. That Google chooses to is another matter. Please please, can we stop trying to deflect the real issue with these whataboutisms?
- tgragnato 9y ago
  In this particular case, the whole thing is probably more complicated than what it seems: it's not entirely clear that Google chooses to is another matter. As a reference: "The Digital Disruption - Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power" by Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen [http://archive.is/R13l2 http://archive.is/R13l2] In the past people interpreted the article as "US companies control a large proportion of the internet infrastructure, the government can use this as a foreign policy tool". If you're a foreigner this may not sound cool.. It is natural for a company that maintains complex and entrenched relationships with a government, to influence and being influenced, at home and abroad.
  - kodablah 9y ago
    Sure. But that doesn't change the common moral stance that one has of "X government should not be able to force a company to do things outside of X's jurisdiction" for any values of X, even if that is at odds with what currently happens today. And some people's morals may extend the quote to "if company is not headquartered in X" or "if company does not do business in X" or whatever they may think. But the conversation on the morals themselves cannot be had if all we do is replace values of X for three reasons: 1) it assumes people have inconsistent morals, and 2) no two situations are the same and 3) the conversation is diluted. To your broader point about US internet hegemony and government influence, I think it doesn't sound cool to many regardless of where they reside. If we must draw equivalence for history's sake here, one could look at the dissemination of culture over and over again and protectionist measures by the encroached upon in order to retain power, often against the will of the citizens. Over time, people will do what they want, in the meantime all most want is those with power to limit themselves. It also has value to recognize the environments that foster these cultural innovations and fight fire with fire instead of power.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. The actually do, that's inherent in the nature of sovereignty. You can eliminate the practical effect of that by adopting a single shared global sovereign regime, but that idea is controversial even in the abstract, and in concrete detail even moreso, as those who agree that such a thing is desirable disagree violently on the character that such a regime should have, and mostly view not having one as better than having the wrong one, so we are stuck in a system of multiple sovereigns.

dsacco 9y ago
Do you mean that sovereignty grants that authority in principle, or in actuality? If the United States doesn't enforce the demands of another country with respect to a company in its borders, the company can freely ignore those demands. That various countries choose to have treaties enforcing the demands of others seems to be less about sovereignty and more about good relations. For example, Germany ordered Project Gutenberg to remove certain books from its servers or to make them unavailable to Germans. I maintain a full mirror of Project Gutenberg and I make the banned books available to Germans. If Germany sent me a personal letter demanding I cease and desist, I'd ignore it. If the United States demanded I cease and desist on Germany's behalf, I wouldn't ignore it. But the latter doesn't seem like "Germany's sovereignty" to me.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Do you mean that sovereignty grants that authority in principle, or in actuality? Yes, both. > If the United States doesn't enforce the demands of another country with respect to a company in its borders, the company can freely ignore those demands. The authority to legislate and the ability to impose consequences are two different things. It is, for instance, indisputable that the US has authority to criinalize tax fraud by it's citizens occuring within the US, but if a tax fraudster escapes to a foreign country with all their possessions before the US catches them, and that country is uninterested in assisting the US, the US may well find it practically impossible to enforce sanctions without engaging in interstate conflict. The only difference with the situation at hand is that an act committee overseas by a foreign entity is more likely to be difficult to sanction since flight for the purpose of evasion is less likely to be necessary (OTOH, if the offender has any contact with the offended jurisdiction, they are still at risk, and being g ofrced to avoid the jurisdiction to avoid sanctions may itself be a kind of sanction.)

GCU-Empiricist 9y ago

So this is lawfare between a company that makes something and a company purported to have stolen their design. I guess the question that really would make it interesting is what country is the purported design thief in?

hunter23 9y ago

I think it's actually quite common for a country to dictate what it's citizens and companies can do outside of its borders. For example, * A US company can be prosecuted on corruption charges if it bribes an official out of its borders. This is even if what they do is not considered bribery in the country itself; you are bound to the US law even when you are doing business outside of it. The US has used this approach to clamp down corruption cases of companies in developing countries. * Trade embargos work this way. We have an embargo on Iran and ban US based companies from doing business with them, even if its through a subsidiary that operates outside our borders * US citizens are required to pay taxes when they live in another country (we are the only country to tax globally) * As a US traveler, you have to follow some US laws even when you are in other countries. The US has used this to combat sex tourism. So while it may be easy to go around the country's age of consent laws while you are visting, you can still be prosecuted in the US. This is to prevent child sex trafficking etc. Nomentatus has listed other examples in this thread. Enforcement, on the other hand is pretty difficult. I don't see how Canada force Google to do things outside of it's borders - the worst they can do is kick Youtube out their country.

endangered 9y ago
* That is a US company * The ban affects US companies * The taxes affect US citizens * The laws affect US citizens This has nothing to do with this decision. What Canada is aiming to do is to force a non-Canadian company to follow Canadian law even if it does not operate at all in Canada.
- lovich 9y ago
  It's interacting with Canadian citizenship and being paid by Canadian companies for advertising. If it's literally doing no operations inside of Canada then they have nothing to worry about because Canada couldn't do anything to them. Its pretty hypocritical of companies to rely on local laws to protect them but then act like all their customers on the internet don't exist in any real space and aren't under a nation states juridisction. I'd prefer a completely free internet, but you don't get to have it both ways

8note 9y ago

Nothing requires Google to do business in Canada, and it's not like this is the first Canadian law to extend to things that happen internationally.

flukus 9y ago

> One nation does NOT have the authority to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. We crossed this bridge quite a while ago, it's only the direction that's changing. If I hacked a server in the US from the UK guess where I'm being charged? If I send drugs from Canada to the US guess where I'm being charged? These aren't hypotheticals, they've happened before. I agree it needs to be changed, but this was foreseeable a long time ago and nobody cared.