Belgium Tries to Fine Yahoo for Protecting US User Privacy

Techdirt is reporting that Belgium is trying to extract fines from Yahoo for not producing user data that was recently demanded of the US company. Instead of following normal diplomatic channels Belgian officials apparently made the data demands directly to Yahoo's US headquarters and then took the company to criminal court, where a judge issued the fine. "The implications of this ruling are profound and far-reaching. Following the court's logic would subject user data associated with any service generally available online to the jurisdiction of all countries. It would also subject all companies that offer services generally available on the global Internet to the laws of all jurisdictions, potentially exposing individual employees to a variety of criminal sanctions."

Comments

How do they enforce the ruling?

[javacowboy]

This is about as laughable as a Brazilian judge ordering YouTube shut down because a incriminating video of two Brazilian celebrities kept getting posted on that site. Needless to say, YouTube is still up and running.

This isn't the first strange internet ruling coming out of Belgium. There was the row between Copiepresse and Google over Google linking to Copiepresse's newspapers. Google was fined and promptly stopped linking to the newspaper's sites.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Individuals affected already

[sugarmotor]

I am getting the suspicion that this story pretends this to be a bigger issue because it affects an American company.

However, this kind of "which laws are affecting what I do" has already got individuals. See for example the case of Hew Raymond Griffiths,

  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hew_Raymond_Griffiths
  * http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?id=1778&s=latestnews

Griffiths was extradited from Australia to the U.S., a country he had never visited, for some "Intellectual Property" crimes.

For a company it is a mere money issue, but when individuals are extradited it becomes extremely problematic.

Stephan

Re:Let's Put Belgium To Sleep

[socrplayr813]

There is a wider variety of higher quality beer brewed in the United States than any other country. You just have to buy beer somewhere other than Big-Box-Mart. Buy from a micro-brewery. I wish people would stop this lie that the best beer comes from Europe, when it no longer does. Our microbreweries are as wonderful as our macrobreweries suck -- a whole lot. DFH ftw.

I'm not a big fan of generalizations like this, but parent is right that there are some truly spectacular microbrews in the US. Worth pointing out, even if it is a bit off topic.

Re:Let's Put the USA to sleep

[whoever57]

Hmmm. And here I thought that the US merely forbid US-based credit card companies from paying to on-line casinos. That'd be entirely legal

Then you haven't been paying attention. The USA has pursued actions against foreign-based Internet gambling sites, including Partypoker.com. Also, forbidding credit card payments is against WTO treaties, which are (per the constitution), the law of the land.