Live data from Hacker News

Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

theglobeandmail.com

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#31
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

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 Cour…

Will the US extradite someone to Canada for contempt of court?

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#32
post #13
post #2

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 t…

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...)

I've been party to a court session where the defendant tried to pull something like that. Let's just say I would advise against it, 'career limiting move' does not even begin to describe it.

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Cour…

Will the US extradite someone to Canada for contempt of court?

They could simply seize the assets of Google Montreal.

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#34
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

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 Cour…

I agree, out and out Contempt of Court.

Further, the Judge themselves is in charge of deciding whether Contempt of Court has occurred.

No possible jury to convince or appeal to, just the judge.

They can have you imprisoned in under a day.

Contempt of Court is very serious.

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#35
post #9

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

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).

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#36

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

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! :)

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#38
post #25
post #22

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, Youtu…

Why would a justice system care? Or do you mean government?

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.

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#39
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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?

Re: Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide

#40
post #22

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, Youtu…

I expect at least in the medium term it will look more like a global (or at least multilateral) treaty, rather than a global government. But I agree that now is the time to think about how we could like such a thing to be structured. As much as some people would like it to be, the internet can't be the new wild west forever. It will be regulated. The hope is to have it regulated in a fair, consistent, and manageable…

Good luck regulating my encrypted anonymized connection.
Post reply on HN