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We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. BC and Clearview both have a point.

We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. BC and Clearview both have a point. But which jurisdiction is in play? Is it the one where the person lives or where the picture was taken? Was it the company that took the picture, one of a dozen networks in play, the one that transmitted it to a server, or the one that aggregated it into a database, or the one that sold the data? There could be 20 countries involved. Laws really need to catch up to the tech which has far outpaced them.

vkou 5y ago
> We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. It's easy to reconcile. If you want to operate in a jurisdiction, you are subject to that jurisdiction's laws, and legal injunctions. This is a very basic thing, on the level that a school-child can understand it. Just because you're operating using computers doesn't change a damn thing. When a jurisdiction tells you that you can't operate in it, unless you change your behaviour, you either change your behaviour, or stop operating in it. Or keep operating, and be treated by it like a criminal. Or appeal. If you don't like Canadian internet laws, don't do business in Canada. If you don't like Russian speech laws, don't do business in Russia, or plan a vacation in Leningrad. If you don't like Quebec language laws... Don't operate in Quebec. You're not entitled access to every market in the world, if you can't comply with their rules. If the rules are contradictory, pick the ones you care about more.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > If you want to operate in a jurisdiction What defines "operating"? Does it mean you are physically based there? Your infrastructure being there? Your company registration? Your bank account? Etc. Back in the day these weren't problems in practice; for physical goods/services you typically were based in a single jurisdiction. If exporting goods, customs take care of it. The internet has no "customs" equivalent though, so you can very well be based in one jurisdiction and yet process personal data of residents of another. Sometimes you may not even know where the data subject actually resides.
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    Someone might be using a VPN as well...
    - vkou 5y ago
      If I run a liquor store in Florida, and a Saudi tourist visits it and buys a bottle of wine, that's not my problem. Saudi Arabia can't do anything to me, regardless of how many of their drug laws I'm breaking. If I start advertising my store in Saudi Arabia, or move my money into a Saudi bank, or visit their kingdom, then I'll have a problem. Because it can do something to me. It can tell my business partners to cut me off, or seize my money, or, in the latter case, arrest me as a drug kingpin.
  - criddell 5y ago
    As long as subjects opt-in with their geographic information, the companies can protect themselves.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > What defines "operating"? Does it mean you are physically based there? Your infrastructure being there? Your company registration? Your bank account? Etc. For globally distributed businesses governments can and will target payment processors. > The internet has no "customs" equivalent though We can thank regulators for not understanding this "computer" thing. This environment gave the industry 20 years of innovation. Nothing more depressing than dealing with custom and special snowflakes regulations (most of the time, to protect some local rent-seeker!). In this case, BC can do whatever it wants, they have no jurisdiction. They might as well claim ownership of the moon.
  - krono 5y ago
    Using a EU-citizen's picture for marketing purposes without their consent, if the picture was taken someplace where this is legal, sure. But that same picture should then not be used for that purpose in the EU where it's illegal. It's not dissimilar to how public drinking in The Netherlands would get me drunk, but doing the same in Saudi Arabia gets me 100 lashes.
  - 5y ago
kube-system 5y ago
The internet has always stretched through many different legal jurisdictions. It's tech companies who have decided that they can hide fugitive at the other end of a wire.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  > The internet has always stretched through many different legal jurisdictions. Back in the early days this wasn't a problem in practice because internet-based entities were operating in good faith, so even if the legal landscape was murky, nobody had a need to resort to it. This has now changed as companies are now acting in bad faith doing things many find reprehensible, and a legal precedent and/or a change in law is needed to effectively deal with those bad actors.
  - wyre 5y ago
    > This has now changed as companies are now acting in bad faith I wonder what the major impetus for the change has been. Is it akin to having a million monkeys guided by money on computers, eventually one of them will write code enabling a fascist internet?
    - rory 5y ago
      Sort of. Originally, it was just hackers making things on the internet. Now, it's the most popular way to make money in the world. So if there's a way to make money doing something reprehensible on the internet, someone reprehensible will find it and do it.
dogleash 5y ago
>Laws really need to catch up to the tech which has far outpaced them. None of this is new, or specific to tech, this is just how companies try to end-run the law. How exactly would you propose changing jurisdictional boundaries and/or rules? Subjecting people to more governments that are not the ones for the areas in which they're operating? Removing the ability for some local areas to have control over the business that occurs in it?
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  What if they put out warrants for anyone involved and arrested them if they ever went to Canada? Extradition is probably off the table, but I think really the way to disincentivize this kind of garbage is at some level to hold people accountable for what their company does.
stefan_ 5y ago
I don't understand, the law is clear: the set of all of those.
- tremon 5y ago
  Is that set an intersection or a union?

vkou 5y ago

> We've created a mess of legal jurisdiction and geography that is difficult to reconcile with globally distributed systems. It's easy to reconcile. If you want to operate in a jurisdiction, you are subject to that jurisdiction's laws, and legal injunctions. This is a very basic thing, on the level that a school-child can understand it. Just because you're operating using computers doesn't change a damn thing. When a jurisdiction tells you that you can't operate in it, unless you change your behaviour, you either change your behaviour, or stop operating in it. Or keep operating, and be treated by it like a criminal. Or appeal. If you don't like Canadian internet laws, don't do business in Canada. If you don't like Russian speech laws, don't do business in Russia, or plan a vacation in Leningrad. If you don't like Quebec language laws... Don't operate in Quebec. You're not entitled access to every market in the world, if you can't comply with their rules. If the rules are contradictory, pick the ones you care about more.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> If you want to operate in a jurisdiction What defines "operating"? Does it mean you are physically based there? Your infrastructure being there? Your company registration? Your bank account? Etc. Back in the day these weren't problems in practice; for physical goods/services you typically were based in a single jurisdiction. If exporting goods, customs take care of it. The internet has no "customs" equivalent though, so you can very well be based in one jurisdiction and yet process personal data of residents of another. Sometimes you may not even know where the data subject actually resides.
- danlugo92 5y ago
  Someone might be using a VPN as well...
  - vkou 5y ago
    If I run a liquor store in Florida, and a Saudi tourist visits it and buys a bottle of wine, that's not my problem. Saudi Arabia can't do anything to me, regardless of how many of their drug laws I'm breaking. If I start advertising my store in Saudi Arabia, or move my money into a Saudi bank, or visit their kingdom, then I'll have a problem. Because it can do something to me. It can tell my business partners to cut me off, or seize my money, or, in the latter case, arrest me as a drug kingpin.
- criddell 5y ago
  As long as subjects opt-in with their geographic information, the companies can protect themselves.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > What defines "operating"? Does it mean you are physically based there? Your infrastructure being there? Your company registration? Your bank account? Etc. For globally distributed businesses governments can and will target payment processors. > The internet has no "customs" equivalent though We can thank regulators for not understanding this "computer" thing. This environment gave the industry 20 years of innovation. Nothing more depressing than dealing with custom and special snowflakes regulations (most of the time, to protect some local rent-seeker!). In this case, BC can do whatever it wants, they have no jurisdiction. They might as well claim ownership of the moon.
- krono 5y ago
  Using a EU-citizen's picture for marketing purposes without their consent, if the picture was taken someplace where this is legal, sure. But that same picture should then not be used for that purpose in the EU where it's illegal. It's not dissimilar to how public drinking in The Netherlands would get me drunk, but doing the same in Saudi Arabia gets me 100 lashes.
- 5y ago

kube-system 5y ago

The internet has always stretched through many different legal jurisdictions. It's tech companies who have decided that they can hide fugitive at the other end of a wire.

Nextgrid 5y ago
> The internet has always stretched through many different legal jurisdictions. Back in the early days this wasn't a problem in practice because internet-based entities were operating in good faith, so even if the legal landscape was murky, nobody had a need to resort to it. This has now changed as companies are now acting in bad faith doing things many find reprehensible, and a legal precedent and/or a change in law is needed to effectively deal with those bad actors.
- wyre 5y ago
  > This has now changed as companies are now acting in bad faith I wonder what the major impetus for the change has been. Is it akin to having a million monkeys guided by money on computers, eventually one of them will write code enabling a fascist internet?
  - rory 5y ago
    Sort of. Originally, it was just hackers making things on the internet. Now, it's the most popular way to make money in the world. So if there's a way to make money doing something reprehensible on the internet, someone reprehensible will find it and do it.

dogleash 5y ago

>Laws really need to catch up to the tech which has far outpaced them. None of this is new, or specific to tech, this is just how companies try to end-run the law. How exactly would you propose changing jurisdictional boundaries and/or rules? Subjecting people to more governments that are not the ones for the areas in which they're operating? Removing the ability for some local areas to have control over the business that occurs in it?

hiptobecubic 5y ago
What if they put out warrants for anyone involved and arrested them if they ever went to Canada? Extradition is probably off the table, but I think really the way to disincentivize this kind of garbage is at some level to hold people accountable for what their company does.

stefan_ 5y ago

I don't understand, the law is clear: the set of all of those.

tremon 5y ago
Is that set an intersection or a union?