13 ms·

Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

155 points by tempestn 12y ago

bambax 12y ago
This is insane. The plaintiff, Equustek Solutions Inc., says the main defendant, Morgan Jack, sells networking devices that infringe on their trademark. The defendant sells these things online; the plaintiff wants his websites to be dereferenced from Google. The court agreed and asked Google to remove the links on all its properties worldwide (not just google.ca). But what does Google have to do with this? Why does the plaintiff not go after the infringer, to shut his websites down and/or fine him and/or get him in prison? Telling Google to remove the links (worldwide!!) is like issuing an injunction against all restaurants the world over to stop selling food to anyone called "Morgan Jack" in the remote chance it will have an effect on his business.
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  Well, it's often said around here that we should consider Google to be in the ad business, right ? Then following that logic Google is actually advertising illegal stuff by providing links to Morgan Jack's website on Google's own site. I am not convinced by that line of thoughts, though. > Telling Google to remove the links (worldwide!!) is like issuing an injunction against all restaurants the world over to stop selling food to anyone called "Morgan Jack" in the remote chance it will have an effect on his business. But Google would be the only restaurant on the whole planet in that analogy.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Well Google is the only one that matters. Sure Bing and DDG exist and you can sometimes bump into a person using either of those, but for majority of the population, Google is the Internet, for better or worse.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    To further the analogy - it would be like telling McDonalds to not sell food to this person but ignoring In'n'Out Burger and Burger King. I understand the point about forcing Google to stop sellin advertising to this person. I am confused about how a disappeared person continues to pay for services from Google; why didn't anyone get a court order to force Google to release information about the infringer? {edit: i did not downvote parent. I am not sure why parent has been downvoted}
    - tempestn 12y ago
      Google isn't selling advertising to him. Their only involvement as far as I can tell is that his sites show up in organic search results.
      - DanBC 12y ago
        Thanks for the clarification! I hadn't heard about this before today and doing a bit of research it sounds like something that has been going on for years - since at least 2007 - and there has been some really dodgy practice. (But I still don't see why Google is targeted here). http://www.rudy2.com/datalink-equustek/ http://www.rudy2.com/datalink-equustek/ And it seems that Datalink have made some effort to clarify the situation: http://1770-kf3.com/ http://1770-kf3.com/ > We would like to clarify that DataLink no longer sell/promote the following Canadian manufacturer’s products. “Equustek Solutions Inc.’s products (www.equustek.com), as listed below, are no longer distributed by Datalink:” DL2000 DL3500 DL4000 DL4500 DL6000 DL7000 EQ7000 DL-PC DL-PCI DL-PCIe DL-PC/104 DL-STED EQ-DCM “Customers of these products should contact Equustek directly at the website above or toll free at 1-888-387-3787" I don't know this area so I have no idea what I need to type into a search box to get a Datalink result turning up where I should be getting an Equustek result. (And I'm trying across different search engines).
    - seacious 12y ago
      I wonder if this will eventually lead to google making use of a decentralized federated search strategy where they provide the technology to everyone who wants their site to be findable by means of google, but do not actually produce the results themselves. From a technological pov that would certainly be far more challenging than their current system, but it might make them less of a target legally.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    > Well, it's often said around here that we should consider Google to be in the ad business, right ? Then following that logic Google is actually advertising illegal stuff by providing links to Morgan Jack's website on Google's own site. Google is in the ad business in the same way a newspaper or a magazine is: Selling ads is the major source of income. Every time someone says that Google is an ad business, for calibration remind yourself that so is the New York Times. Anyway, Google linking (in the regular results section, not ads) to the website of a given business is similar to a newspaper or magazine stating in editorial content that a certain business exists and what its address is. That is obviously not "selling ads" in any way, shape or form.
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Yes, everyone would do well to remember the NYT is in the ad business too.
- Natsu 12y ago
  Some part of me wonders what would happen if they were to turn off Google to Canada for a day and list the judge's phone number as the person to complain to. (Probably one very angry judge, but I wonder...)
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Probably a lot of angry users, anti-trust proceedings, and a bunch of other stuff they don't want.
  - kryptiskt 12y ago
    Sounds like something from here would apply: "Contempt of Court includes the following behaviours: - Fails to maintain a respectful attitude, remain silent or refrain from showing approval or disapproval of the proceeding - Refuses or neglects to obey a subpoena - Willfully disobeys a process or order of the Court - Interfere with the orderly administration of justice or to impair the authority or dignity of the Court" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#Canada
    - jrockway 12y ago
      Will the US extradite someone to Canada for contempt of court?
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        They could simply seize the assets of Google Montreal.
        vacri 12y ago
        I imagine Google going dark in Canada would hurt Canada more than it's worth (playing out the fantasy scenario). I don't just mean search, but at this point there'll be plenty of companies that rely on Google Apps, including gmail.
- shakethemonkey 12y ago
  This wouldn't fly in the USA: "It is clear from the record that Google was never named as a party to the suit, was never served with process, never waived or accepted process, and never made an appearance in the suit before the expunction order was entered. Nothing in the record establishes that Google stands in privity to the commission or to Jackson. Accordingly, we hold that Google was not a party to the suit and that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter orders against Google." [1] [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07402727525/texas-appeals-court-vacates-order-commanding-google-to-hunt-down-third-party-content-destroy-it.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07402727525/texas...
- jt2190 12y ago
  The issue is that a lower court issued a temporary injunction against Morgan Jack to stop selling their products in British Columbia while the issue was being sorted out at trial. Morgan Jack then disappeared "into the cloud" and continued to sell their products online, via links to their products in Google search results. Equustek then claimed that Morgan Jack was still in violation of the court order to stop selling in BC, and that's the issue that has gone to the BC Supreme Court: Is Google "doing business" in BC when it presents Morgan Jack's links to BC residents? The court ruled that under the current rules, Google is indeed doing business in BC, and can be ordered to remove links to Morgan Jack by a BC court.
- Tyr42 12y ago
  Earlier, Google already agreed to remove their website, as defined by some 350 urls. But the defendant started auto generating new urls, which had to go back to the judge (I think) to be blocked. Google was fine with blocking specific urls worldwide by court order. Now, the ruling requires google to block them, even if they change the url. That's the new upgrade that required the ruling.
- peeters 12y ago
  How about drawing parallels to a similar situation? A child porn ring manages to stay online via using ever-changing URLs and relying on Google's indexing. Prosecutors of course go after the people maintaining the network. But Google still has a moral and legal obligation to stop indexing the network if feasible. I'd say at the end of the day it's a matter of degree. In both situations, a content provider has been deemed illegal is leveraging Google to stay afloat. But while in one case Google's obligation seems like a no-brainer due to its heinous nature, the other elicits less passion.
  - opendais 12y ago
    Using that logic... Russia can ban all LBGT sites on Google because it has been deemed illegal.
    - peeters 12y ago
      That's not my logic at all. The GP asked what this has to do with Google. I'm saying there are clearly scenarios where Google has a responsibility to limit access to content, even content they don't provide. In my opinion, it is not tenable to say "let the courts go after the child pornographers, but Google shouldn't be asked to block access to their content". And notably, I'm not even arguing that Google should ever be ordered to block sites worldwide. The GP's argument has NOTHING to do with the worldwide nature, on the contrary, that it is worldwide was only parenthetical in the comment. The same argument would stand even if the decision only affected Canada. It argues against involving Google at all, and that's what I'm debating.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
Haha. What a hilariously nonsensical ruling. The United States should quickly issue a ruling that expressly forbids Google from blocking sites in Canada. Then we can fight over it! As a I would like to see all countries in which Google has an office claim their nation's full tax rate on Google's worldwide revenue. All rates combined I think it might be possible for Google to owe ten dollars in taxes per dollars of revenue.
- pjc50 12y ago
  There's already a US law limiting the extent to which UK libel damages are enforceable.
  - kps 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act
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DanBC 12y ago
What happens to Google if they comply in all of Canada but do not comply for the rest of the world? It would be cheaper for Google to offer specialist SEO and web design help for these aggrieved parties - "here's how you get your story out and ranked higher than the attack sites" - than to fight legal cases through the courts. Although I am pleased thay're taking the cases to court to defend their position.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Google was the defendant in this case, so they had little choice but to go to court. Let alone the consequences to their Canadian business, US and Canadian courts cooperate in enforcing judgements, so they couldn't ignore it regardless. (Of course they are choosing to appeal, which is optional but obviously a good idea given the pain this precedent could cause.)
  - briandh 12y ago
    > Google was the defendant in this case No they weren't. In fact, the decision linked at the top of the thread specifically refers to Google and Google Canada as "non-parties".
    - tempestn 12y ago
      Ah, right you are. Google was a non-party, but was named and served: "Non-parties affected by Mareva injunctions are not normally before the Court, because applications of that kind are brought without notice. Google was named in this application, served with materials, and attended the hearing." So the rest of the comment stands, but you are correct that they were not a defendant.
Fuxy 12y ago
At this rate google is going to shit. By the time every court in the world is done removing all the stuff they want the only thing left will be cats. There won't be any porn though that is too controversial.
PinguTS 12y ago
Not that new. Most of the DMCA take down notices are also executed worldwide.
- tempestn 12y ago
  Good point. Obviously Google does considerably more business in the US than Canada, but it's still bizarre for any one country's courts to make decisions that directly impact the entire world. Maybe it's time for an international treaty on Internet regulation to spell out exactly what powers any given nation has. (Although such a thing would probably have the potential to go very wrong.)
- tomp 12y ago
  DMCA take downs are only effective because Google is a US company. If I have a company in e.g. Slovenia, DMCA is ineffective, and they would have to go through Slovenian courts to take down the website (unless they just seize the domain).
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Yes and no. Some countries (Canada being one) have treaties with the US that let court judgements in one country be enforced in the other. So even if you have no assets in the US or income from the US, a US court decision could still affect you if you live in such a country. Of course, most internet companies do do some business in the US.
- nknighthb 12y ago
  DMCA takedowns are not court orders. You're not actually compelled to comply with them at all, but you lose access to the safe harbor provision if you don't.
throwwit 12y ago
The Internet is going to become a country-by-country intranet at this rate.
- scrrr 12y ago
  The world wide web. Off topic, but I think we tend to forget that most legislation affects websites. Nothing keeps you from writing your own version of DNS, your own protocol (who says it has to be HTTP) etc. That's the beauty of TCP/IP! :)
  - toyg 12y ago
    They'll just start writing laws regulating TCP/IP instead. They already do in China, after all. There is no technical answer to this sort of problems.
avz 12y ago
It's not only about free speech. Different cultural, social and economic conditions mean different countries live by different laws. I don't know the circumstances of the case, but it seems plausible that given an opportunity a German, Emirati, Chinese or Brazilian court may reach a different conclusion as to the legality of Morgan Jack's business. Countries are known to have very different labor and copyright laws. It's plausible that some circumstances (e.g. mistreatment, authorship, limitations on copyright transferability, nuances and even legality of the contract the parties had entered) could make courts elsewhere consider Morgan Jack to be the rightful owner of the design. What if such a court elsewhere made a contradictory ruling and also demanded from Google that it be enforced worldwide?
- caf 12y ago
  At a guess, this is the risk you take by doing business in two or more jurisdictions: you might be subjected to two mutually-incompatible rulings, in which case your only alternative is to stop doing business in at least one of those jurisdictions.
  - avz 12y ago
    Assuming courts you deal with don't overreach like the B.C. court just did, you can easily resolve this problem by complying with each law within each respective jurisdiction. This is made easier by the fact that your company is usually represented by separate local legal entities whose business is within each jurisdiction.
    - pjc50 12y ago
      Which jurisdiction is a web page in? Where it's hosted, where it's controlled from, where its ads are served from, where it's read, where its payment processing is done?
      - avz 12y ago
        A website may be complex enough and distributed enough to straddle multiple jurisdictions (this isn't an entirely new situation though since similar issues came up with radio spectrum regulations). The bottom line is this: your jurisdiction extends as far as your control. A court may be able to issue injunctions against the systems which are located on its jurisdiction which may only be a subset of systems supporting a given site. In places where it is legal, it may also censor the internet. If everything from hosting, through advertising, payments and readership are outside the jurisdiction then it can do nothing directly and must resort to seeking assistance from foreign jurisdictions. I'd say in those situations it is entirely appropriate.
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kamjam 12y ago
So I am going to assume that the plaintiff will also be filing against Bing, Yahoo and all the other search engines individually too? Cos you know, Google is not the only search engine out there...
- toyg 12y ago
  It's more likely that, if this trend continues, Google itself will eventually drag competitors through the courts to force them to comply with rules they are forced to obey. Or they might lobby the US Congress or EU Parliament to pass laws that "clarify the position of all search engines".
- keithpeter 12y ago
  It had occurred to me that the (apparent) failure of the plaintiff, the engineering company, to file complaints against the other companies providing search engines might be a factor in an appeal against the injunction by Google. As others have commented, I suspect something like the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea that replaced a previous court dating from the League of Nations times, may arise. Meanwhile, the legal profession in Canada will experience a welcome increase in civil law work and fees!
toyg 12y ago
Justice systems the world over have been itching for a way to force this whole interweb thing to fall in line for more than a decade, but they couldn't find a solid-enough target in a quickly-changing landscape. Now that things have matured, they are going after the big established players: Google for search/advertising, Facebook for social activity, Twitter for censorship/regulated speech, Amazon for commerce, Youtube for copyright. It will happen more and more and there is no way around it. The classic cyberpunk countermeasure of finding a friendly nation to hide behind just doesn't work in the long run, as Sweden has proven with the PirateBay case. It might be an unpopular opinion here, but I believe the rise of a global network will inevitably force the rise of a global government. A higher authority is now necessary to sort out this sort of problems in a consistent way. It's the natural evolution we've seen in the past when trade and knowledge networks reached a dimension where differences in legislation made it too difficult for them to flow. The question is: how do we define this global government? Which interests will it represent in practice? I think it's something we should embrace, because otherwise we will be forced to accept it at the point of a non-metaphorical gun.
- mnem 12y ago
  Why would a justice system care? Or do you mean government?
  - toyg 12y ago
    Imagine you were a judge tasked with ruling on a case like this. You know the rules force you to tell Google to stop acting like it does, but you also know that your laws are supposed to stop at your borders, and in any case forcing such a global operation to comply with your ruling is almost like fighting windmills. Wouldn't that bother you? Of course it would.
    - wbillingsley 12y ago
      If I recall, the issue of jurisdiction isn't "does any of the activity happen outside our borders" (law stopping at the border) but "does any of the activity happen inside our borders" (activity in a jurisdiction giving those courts standing).
caf 12y ago
You would have to think that ceasing to do business in BC would be an option competitive with accepting rulings like this in the future.
peterarmstrong 12y ago
If you think this is bad, just wait until July 1 and CASL gets introduced. As a Canadian I'd like to apologize for this: http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2014/25293/how-canadas-anti-spam-law-affects-email-marketers http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2014/25293/how-canadas-a... http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm
- phloxicon 12y ago
  Having consent, a person who can be replied to instead of ano-reply and a mandatory unsubscribe doesn't sound so bad to me. What are the main arguments against it?
  - peterarmstrong 12y ago
    Mandatory unsubscribe is totally fine, obviously. But CASL includes making confirmation, welcome and update emails opt-in, or else risking an up to $10 million dollar fine. Yes, really. Even if you're not a Canadian business, this will apply to you if you email Canadians. Yes, really. Say goodbye to your opt-out email drip courses.
    - ovis 12y ago
      Wouldn't confirmation and welcome emails fall under "implied consent"? http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/infograph3.htm http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/infograph3.htm Seems like update emails might too, depending on the circumstances.
kp25 12y ago
Is Canadian court trying to change the definition of so called "Internet"..? This is insane.
chatmasta 12y ago
The article is quite sparse on details of what, exactly the website is selling. Has anyone found a link to it?
- paulgb 12y ago
  Plaintiff: http://www.equustek.com/ http://www.equustek.com/ Defendant: http://www.gw1000.com/ http://www.gw1000.com/
austerity 12y ago
This shit needs to end. Even the obvious jurisdiction overreach aside, what happened is the court ordering Google - a party not in any way involved in the conflict at hand - to withhold information from the public. The idea that this "western" form of censorship is in any way better than, say, the blocks on porn in Pakistan or political censorship in Russia is either extremely short-sighted or simply serves somebody's interests (as in case of the plaintiff lawyer here). How it is OK for anyone to have such authority is beyond me.
hellbreakslose 12y ago
let me guess is it Google's fault this time or ?:D
blueskin_ 12y ago
Does anyone know what this censored site is? Time for some Streisand Effect.
- quasque 12y ago
  Apparently it's any site that sells the "Datalink GW1000".
cmajewsk 12y ago
Why only google? is that the only search engine that displays those links?
paulgb 12y ago
Direct link to the ruling: http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/SC/14/10/2014BCSC1063.htm http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/SC/14/10/2014BCSC1063.ht...
- jt2190 12y ago
  The ruling is very clearly written, and does an excellent job of explaining the difficulty the British Columbia Supreme Court is was faced with in this decision.
- Tyr42 12y ago
  Thank you. That is a good read.
ertdfgcb 12y ago
What happens if Google just says no? Fines?
- atmosx 12y ago
  Hahahaha, that would be a good one. Probably extremely high fines. It's not the way a democracy works to say no. The appeal was the only sensible way to go. The problem is not this case per se. The problem Google faces is the precedent. If this goes through, every one who thinks that there is an irregularity about a website will go to court in order to bring it down from google. If many websites stop being listed on Google, people might start looking for new search engines and... You can imagine how the story goes from there...
jt2190 12y ago
tl;dr British Columbia Supreme Court determines that Google is conducting business in British Columbia, despite no servers, facilities or employees in the province, and can be ordered to remove links that infringe on the plaintiff's intellectual property rights.
bane 12y ago
"No" now what? Sorry Canada, I like you guys, but you don't really get to make rulings for everybody else.
jacquesm 12y ago
I fail to see how this judgment is any different from those where the courts ordered ISPs to block sites like the piratebay. If you're ok with one kind of interference about third parties linking to stuff you should probably be ok with all of them, and if you're against interference in this case you should probably be against interference in general. It's very hard to argue consistently that the one is ok and the other is not. I strongly believe any kind of interference is bad. If you have beef with someone sue them, don't involve the facilitator.
- phantom784 12y ago
  I think the difference here is that the court is asking Google to remove the links worldwide, not just for people accessing Google from within Canada.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    There was a similar case a few years ago with Yahoo vs France, iirc France prevailed: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/news/04iht-yahoo.2.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/news/04iht-yahoo.2.t.html
sigzero 12y ago
I am pretty sure Google is not going to comply.

155 points by tempestn 12y ago

This is insane. The plaintiff, Equustek Solutions Inc., says the main defendant, Morgan Jack, sells networking devices that infringe on their trademark. The defendant sells these things online; the plaintiff wants his websites to be dereferenced from Google. The court agreed and asked Google to remove the links on all its properties worldwide (not just google.ca). But what does Google have to do with this? Why does the plaintiff not go after the infringer, to shut his websites down and/or fine him and/or get him in prison? Telling Google to remove the links (worldwide!!) is like issuing an injunction against all restaurants the world over to stop selling food to anyone called "Morgan Jack" in the remote chance it will have an effect on his business.

johnchristopher 12y ago
Well, it's often said around here that we should consider Google to be in the ad business, right ? Then following that logic Google is actually advertising illegal stuff by providing links to Morgan Jack's website on Google's own site. I am not convinced by that line of thoughts, though. > Telling Google to remove the links (worldwide!!) is like issuing an injunction against all restaurants the world over to stop selling food to anyone called "Morgan Jack" in the remote chance it will have an effect on his business. But Google would be the only restaurant on the whole planet in that analogy.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Well Google is the only one that matters. Sure Bing and DDG exist and you can sometimes bump into a person using either of those, but for majority of the population, Google is the Internet, for better or worse.
- DanBC 12y ago
  To further the analogy - it would be like telling McDonalds to not sell food to this person but ignoring In'n'Out Burger and Burger King. I understand the point about forcing Google to stop sellin advertising to this person. I am confused about how a disappeared person continues to pay for services from Google; why didn't anyone get a court order to force Google to release information about the infringer? {edit: i did not downvote parent. I am not sure why parent has been downvoted}
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Google isn't selling advertising to him. Their only involvement as far as I can tell is that his sites show up in organic search results.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Thanks for the clarification! I hadn't heard about this before today and doing a bit of research it sounds like something that has been going on for years - since at least 2007 - and there has been some really dodgy practice. (But I still don't see why Google is targeted here). http://www.rudy2.com/datalink-equustek/ http://www.rudy2.com/datalink-equustek/ And it seems that Datalink have made some effort to clarify the situation: http://1770-kf3.com/ http://1770-kf3.com/ > We would like to clarify that DataLink no longer sell/promote the following Canadian manufacturer’s products. “Equustek Solutions Inc.’s products (www.equustek.com), as listed below, are no longer distributed by Datalink:” DL2000 DL3500 DL4000 DL4500 DL6000 DL7000 EQ7000 DL-PC DL-PCI DL-PCIe DL-PC/104 DL-STED EQ-DCM “Customers of these products should contact Equustek directly at the website above or toll free at 1-888-387-3787" I don't know this area so I have no idea what I need to type into a search box to get a Datalink result turning up where I should be getting an Equustek result. (And I'm trying across different search engines).
  - seacious 12y ago
    I wonder if this will eventually lead to google making use of a decentralized federated search strategy where they provide the technology to everyone who wants their site to be findable by means of google, but do not actually produce the results themselves. From a technological pov that would certainly be far more challenging than their current system, but it might make them less of a target legally.
- mseebach 12y ago
  > Well, it's often said around here that we should consider Google to be in the ad business, right ? Then following that logic Google is actually advertising illegal stuff by providing links to Morgan Jack's website on Google's own site. Google is in the ad business in the same way a newspaper or a magazine is: Selling ads is the major source of income. Every time someone says that Google is an ad business, for calibration remind yourself that so is the New York Times. Anyway, Google linking (in the regular results section, not ads) to the website of a given business is similar to a newspaper or magazine stating in editorial content that a certain business exists and what its address is. That is obviously not "selling ads" in any way, shape or form.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Yes, everyone would do well to remember the NYT is in the ad business too.
Natsu 12y ago
Some part of me wonders what would happen if they were to turn off Google to Canada for a day and list the judge's phone number as the person to complain to. (Probably one very angry judge, but I wonder...)
- tempestn 12y ago
  Probably a lot of angry users, anti-trust proceedings, and a bunch of other stuff they don't want.
- kryptiskt 12y ago
  Sounds like something from here would apply: "Contempt of Court includes the following behaviours: - Fails to maintain a respectful attitude, remain silent or refrain from showing approval or disapproval of the proceeding - Refuses or neglects to obey a subpoena - Willfully disobeys a process or order of the Court - Interfere with the orderly administration of justice or to impair the authority or dignity of the Court" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#Canada
  - jrockway 12y ago
    Will the US extradite someone to Canada for contempt of court?
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      They could simply seize the assets of Google Montreal.
      - vacri 12y ago
        I imagine Google going dark in Canada would hurt Canada more than it's worth (playing out the fantasy scenario). I don't just mean search, but at this point there'll be plenty of companies that rely on Google Apps, including gmail.
shakethemonkey 12y ago
This wouldn't fly in the USA: "It is clear from the record that Google was never named as a party to the suit, was never served with process, never waived or accepted process, and never made an appearance in the suit before the expunction order was entered. Nothing in the record establishes that Google stands in privity to the commission or to Jackson. Accordingly, we hold that Google was not a party to the suit and that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter orders against Google." [1] [1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07402727525/texas-appeals-court-vacates-order-commanding-google-to-hunt-down-third-party-content-destroy-it.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140609/07402727525/texas...
jt2190 12y ago
The issue is that a lower court issued a temporary injunction against Morgan Jack to stop selling their products in British Columbia while the issue was being sorted out at trial. Morgan Jack then disappeared "into the cloud" and continued to sell their products online, via links to their products in Google search results. Equustek then claimed that Morgan Jack was still in violation of the court order to stop selling in BC, and that's the issue that has gone to the BC Supreme Court: Is Google "doing business" in BC when it presents Morgan Jack's links to BC residents? The court ruled that under the current rules, Google is indeed doing business in BC, and can be ordered to remove links to Morgan Jack by a BC court.
Tyr42 12y ago
Earlier, Google already agreed to remove their website, as defined by some 350 urls. But the defendant started auto generating new urls, which had to go back to the judge (I think) to be blocked. Google was fine with blocking specific urls worldwide by court order. Now, the ruling requires google to block them, even if they change the url. That's the new upgrade that required the ruling.
peeters 12y ago
How about drawing parallels to a similar situation? A child porn ring manages to stay online via using ever-changing URLs and relying on Google's indexing. Prosecutors of course go after the people maintaining the network. But Google still has a moral and legal obligation to stop indexing the network if feasible. I'd say at the end of the day it's a matter of degree. In both situations, a content provider has been deemed illegal is leveraging Google to stay afloat. But while in one case Google's obligation seems like a no-brainer due to its heinous nature, the other elicits less passion.
- opendais 12y ago
  Using that logic... Russia can ban all LBGT sites on Google because it has been deemed illegal.
  - peeters 12y ago
    That's not my logic at all. The GP asked what this has to do with Google. I'm saying there are clearly scenarios where Google has a responsibility to limit access to content, even content they don't provide. In my opinion, it is not tenable to say "let the courts go after the child pornographers, but Google shouldn't be asked to block access to their content". And notably, I'm not even arguing that Google should ever be ordered to block sites worldwide. The GP's argument has NOTHING to do with the worldwide nature, on the contrary, that it is worldwide was only parenthetical in the comment. The same argument would stand even if the decision only affected Canada. It argues against involving Google at all, and that's what I'm debating.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

Haha. What a hilariously nonsensical ruling. The United States should quickly issue a ruling that expressly forbids Google from blocking sites in Canada. Then we can fight over it! As a I would like to see all countries in which Google has an office claim their nation's full tax rate on Google's worldwide revenue. All rates combined I think it might be possible for Google to owe ten dollars in taxes per dollars of revenue.

pjc50 12y ago
There's already a US law limiting the extent to which UK libel damages are enforceable.
- kps 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act

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DanBC 12y ago

What happens to Google if they comply in all of Canada but do not comply for the rest of the world? It would be cheaper for Google to offer specialist SEO and web design help for these aggrieved parties - "here's how you get your story out and ranked higher than the attack sites" - than to fight legal cases through the courts. Although I am pleased thay're taking the cases to court to defend their position.

tempestn 12y ago
Google was the defendant in this case, so they had little choice but to go to court. Let alone the consequences to their Canadian business, US and Canadian courts cooperate in enforcing judgements, so they couldn't ignore it regardless. (Of course they are choosing to appeal, which is optional but obviously a good idea given the pain this precedent could cause.)
- briandh 12y ago
  > Google was the defendant in this case No they weren't. In fact, the decision linked at the top of the thread specifically refers to Google and Google Canada as "non-parties".
  - tempestn 12y ago
    Ah, right you are. Google was a non-party, but was named and served: "Non-parties affected by Mareva injunctions are not normally before the Court, because applications of that kind are brought without notice. Google was named in this application, served with materials, and attended the hearing." So the rest of the comment stands, but you are correct that they were not a defendant.

Fuxy 12y ago

At this rate google is going to shit. By the time every court in the world is done removing all the stuff they want the only thing left will be cats. There won't be any porn though that is too controversial.

PinguTS 12y ago

Not that new. Most of the DMCA take down notices are also executed worldwide.

tempestn 12y ago
Good point. Obviously Google does considerably more business in the US than Canada, but it's still bizarre for any one country's courts to make decisions that directly impact the entire world. Maybe it's time for an international treaty on Internet regulation to spell out exactly what powers any given nation has. (Although such a thing would probably have the potential to go very wrong.)
tomp 12y ago
DMCA take downs are only effective because Google is a US company. If I have a company in e.g. Slovenia, DMCA is ineffective, and they would have to go through Slovenian courts to take down the website (unless they just seize the domain).
- tempestn 12y ago
  Yes and no. Some countries (Canada being one) have treaties with the US that let court judgements in one country be enforced in the other. So even if you have no assets in the US or income from the US, a US court decision could still affect you if you live in such a country. Of course, most internet companies do do some business in the US.
nknighthb 12y ago
DMCA takedowns are not court orders. You're not actually compelled to comply with them at all, but you lose access to the safe harbor provision if you don't.

throwwit 12y ago

The Internet is going to become a country-by-country intranet at this rate.

scrrr 12y ago
The world wide web. Off topic, but I think we tend to forget that most legislation affects websites. Nothing keeps you from writing your own version of DNS, your own protocol (who says it has to be HTTP) etc. That's the beauty of TCP/IP! :)
- toyg 12y ago
  They'll just start writing laws regulating TCP/IP instead. They already do in China, after all. There is no technical answer to this sort of problems.

avz 12y ago

It's not only about free speech. Different cultural, social and economic conditions mean different countries live by different laws. I don't know the circumstances of the case, but it seems plausible that given an opportunity a German, Emirati, Chinese or Brazilian court may reach a different conclusion as to the legality of Morgan Jack's business. Countries are known to have very different labor and copyright laws. It's plausible that some circumstances (e.g. mistreatment, authorship, limitations on copyright transferability, nuances and even legality of the contract the parties had entered) could make courts elsewhere consider Morgan Jack to be the rightful owner of the design. What if such a court elsewhere made a contradictory ruling and also demanded from Google that it be enforced worldwide?

caf 12y ago
At a guess, this is the risk you take by doing business in two or more jurisdictions: you might be subjected to two mutually-incompatible rulings, in which case your only alternative is to stop doing business in at least one of those jurisdictions.
- avz 12y ago
  Assuming courts you deal with don't overreach like the B.C. court just did, you can easily resolve this problem by complying with each law within each respective jurisdiction. This is made easier by the fact that your company is usually represented by separate local legal entities whose business is within each jurisdiction.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    Which jurisdiction is a web page in? Where it's hosted, where it's controlled from, where its ads are served from, where it's read, where its payment processing is done?
    - avz 12y ago
      A website may be complex enough and distributed enough to straddle multiple jurisdictions (this isn't an entirely new situation though since similar issues came up with radio spectrum regulations). The bottom line is this: your jurisdiction extends as far as your control. A court may be able to issue injunctions against the systems which are located on its jurisdiction which may only be a subset of systems supporting a given site. In places where it is legal, it may also censor the internet. If everything from hosting, through advertising, payments and readership are outside the jurisdiction then it can do nothing directly and must resort to seeking assistance from foreign jurisdictions. I'd say in those situations it is entirely appropriate.

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kamjam 12y ago

So I am going to assume that the plaintiff will also be filing against Bing, Yahoo and all the other search engines individually too? Cos you know, Google is not the only search engine out there...

toyg 12y ago
It's more likely that, if this trend continues, Google itself will eventually drag competitors through the courts to force them to comply with rules they are forced to obey. Or they might lobby the US Congress or EU Parliament to pass laws that "clarify the position of all search engines".
keithpeter 12y ago
It had occurred to me that the (apparent) failure of the plaintiff, the engineering company, to file complaints against the other companies providing search engines might be a factor in an appeal against the injunction by Google. As others have commented, I suspect something like the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea that replaced a previous court dating from the League of Nations times, may arise. Meanwhile, the legal profession in Canada will experience a welcome increase in civil law work and fees!

toyg 12y ago

Justice systems the world over have been itching for a way to force this whole interweb thing to fall in line for more than a decade, but they couldn't find a solid-enough target in a quickly-changing landscape. Now that things have matured, they are going after the big established players: Google for search/advertising, Facebook for social activity, Twitter for censorship/regulated speech, Amazon for commerce, Youtube for copyright. It will happen more and more and there is no way around it. The classic cyberpunk countermeasure of finding a friendly nation to hide behind just doesn't work in the long run, as Sweden has proven with the PirateBay case. It might be an unpopular opinion here, but I believe the rise of a global network will inevitably force the rise of a global government. A higher authority is now necessary to sort out this sort of problems in a consistent way. It's the natural evolution we've seen in the past when trade and knowledge networks reached a dimension where differences in legislation made it too difficult for them to flow. The question is: how do we define this global government? Which interests will it represent in practice? I think it's something we should embrace, because otherwise we will be forced to accept it at the point of a non-metaphorical gun.

mnem 12y ago
Why would a justice system care? Or do you mean government?
- toyg 12y ago
  Imagine you were a judge tasked with ruling on a case like this. You know the rules force you to tell Google to stop acting like it does, but you also know that your laws are supposed to stop at your borders, and in any case forcing such a global operation to comply with your ruling is almost like fighting windmills. Wouldn't that bother you? Of course it would.
  - wbillingsley 12y ago
    If I recall, the issue of jurisdiction isn't "does any of the activity happen outside our borders" (law stopping at the border) but "does any of the activity happen inside our borders" (activity in a jurisdiction giving those courts standing).

caf 12y ago

You would have to think that ceasing to do business in BC would be an option competitive with accepting rulings like this in the future.

peterarmstrong 12y ago

If you think this is bad, just wait until July 1 and CASL gets introduced. As a Canadian I'd like to apologize for this: http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2014/25293/how-canadas-anti-spam-law-affects-email-marketers http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2014/25293/how-canadas-a... http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm

phloxicon 12y ago
Having consent, a person who can be replied to instead of ano-reply and a mandatory unsubscribe doesn't sound so bad to me. What are the main arguments against it?
- peterarmstrong 12y ago
  Mandatory unsubscribe is totally fine, obviously. But CASL includes making confirmation, welcome and update emails opt-in, or else risking an up to $10 million dollar fine. Yes, really. Even if you're not a Canadian business, this will apply to you if you email Canadians. Yes, really. Say goodbye to your opt-out email drip courses.
  - ovis 12y ago
    Wouldn't confirmation and welcome emails fall under "implied consent"? http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/infograph3.htm http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/infograph3.htm Seems like update emails might too, depending on the circumstances.

kp25 12y ago

Is Canadian court trying to change the definition of so called "Internet"..? This is insane.

chatmasta 12y ago

The article is quite sparse on details of what, exactly the website is selling. Has anyone found a link to it?

paulgb 12y ago
Plaintiff: http://www.equustek.com/ http://www.equustek.com/ Defendant: http://www.gw1000.com/ http://www.gw1000.com/

austerity 12y ago

This shit needs to end. Even the obvious jurisdiction overreach aside, what happened is the court ordering Google - a party not in any way involved in the conflict at hand - to withhold information from the public. The idea that this "western" form of censorship is in any way better than, say, the blocks on porn in Pakistan or political censorship in Russia is either extremely short-sighted or simply serves somebody's interests (as in case of the plaintiff lawyer here). How it is OK for anyone to have such authority is beyond me.

hellbreakslose 12y ago

let me guess is it Google's fault this time or ?:D

blueskin_ 12y ago

Does anyone know what this censored site is? Time for some Streisand Effect.

quasque 12y ago
Apparently it's any site that sells the "Datalink GW1000".

cmajewsk 12y ago

Why only google? is that the only search engine that displays those links?

paulgb 12y ago

Direct link to the ruling: http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/SC/14/10/2014BCSC1063.htm http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/SC/14/10/2014BCSC1063.ht...

jt2190 12y ago
The ruling is very clearly written, and does an excellent job of explaining the difficulty the British Columbia Supreme Court is was faced with in this decision.
Tyr42 12y ago
Thank you. That is a good read.

ertdfgcb 12y ago

What happens if Google just says no? Fines?

atmosx 12y ago
Hahahaha, that would be a good one. Probably extremely high fines. It's not the way a democracy works to say no. The appeal was the only sensible way to go. The problem is not this case per se. The problem Google faces is the precedent. If this goes through, every one who thinks that there is an irregularity about a website will go to court in order to bring it down from google. If many websites stop being listed on Google, people might start looking for new search engines and... You can imagine how the story goes from there...

jt2190 12y ago

tl;dr British Columbia Supreme Court determines that Google is conducting business in British Columbia, despite no servers, facilities or employees in the province, and can be ordered to remove links that infringe on the plaintiff's intellectual property rights.

bane 12y ago

"No" now what? Sorry Canada, I like you guys, but you don't really get to make rulings for everybody else.

jacquesm 12y ago

I fail to see how this judgment is any different from those where the courts ordered ISPs to block sites like the piratebay. If you're ok with one kind of interference about third parties linking to stuff you should probably be ok with all of them, and if you're against interference in this case you should probably be against interference in general. It's very hard to argue consistently that the one is ok and the other is not. I strongly believe any kind of interference is bad. If you have beef with someone sue them, don't involve the facilitator.

phantom784 12y ago
I think the difference here is that the court is asking Google to remove the links worldwide, not just for people accessing Google from within Canada.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  There was a similar case a few years ago with Yahoo vs France, iirc France prevailed: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/news/04iht-yahoo.2.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/news/04iht-yahoo.2.t.html

sigzero 12y ago

I am pretty sure Google is not going to comply.