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

if the usa never existed

[circletimessquare]

all of the horrible crimes you ascribe to the usa would still go on

please stop ascribing to american behavior that which is basically human behavior. its better to have an ideology that is based on some sort of principles, rather than mindless kneejerk anti-americanism

then you can still find america guilty of plenty of crimes, and rightfully so. but then you can extend that to find other countries guilty of many of those same crimes, without sounding like an idiot because you want to put forth the idea that the usa is somehow magically the originator of a crime someone else committed

example: the usa meddled in central america... therefore the usa is guilty of absolutely every crime committed there by every player ever since. the usa meddled in the middle east... therefore the usa is responsible for absolutely every crime committed there by every player ever since. etc., ad nauseum, and other such retarded thinking

dude: belgium is not "following the example of the United States". belgium is being retarded all by itself, all on its own. really

i now await the typical and retarded response: i'm a neocon imperialist dick cheney cocksucker, i'm from the lunatic right wing fringe. all because i ask for some logical coherence. can you tell the difference between a moderate opinion and a far right opinion?

please, go right on criticizing the usa. you may hate the usa all you want. go on with your bad self, be my guest, keep the venom flowing and the high holy moral outrage and indignation fresh. i fully support all the anti-american tirades you can muster. zzz

just try to notice at some point all of the other crimes committed by all the other countries in the world

k thx

Re:Let's Put the USA to sleep

[whoever57]

Let's not forget the USA's actions against foreign based gambling operations. The USA started this type of action!

How can you own land?

[gillbates]

The native Americans used to ask. To them, the land was so fundamentally free that to own a piece of it seemed a sacrilege (sp?) against nature.

But then, along came Europeans, and land the Indians had used for centuries was suddenly denied them. You see, Europeans had this notion of property rights extending to the very stuff you put your feet on. You might think it's absurd to lay claim to the internet, but believe me, someone is already thinking about ways of divvying it up and making ordinary people pay for what they used to get for free. You'll pay to transmit, and your recipient will pay to receive. And somewhere, somehow, if the telecoms can manage it, you'll pay a monthly fee to them to *store* the content you received from the internet. Let's not forget Time Warner, who wanted to triple bill YouTube - once for the priviledge of connecting to the Net, a second time for the priviledge of providing *premium* content, and the third time is the user who pays for the bandwidth of downloading it from YouTube.

Freedom isn't free, after all - as the saying goes. If you think the internet can't be owned, you've obviously never met a US legislator.

Quid pro quo, or something along those lines?

[RobVB]

Not too long ago a number of European countries (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Andorra and Belgium, possibly more) at least partially gave up their banking secrecy after being pressured by the US, because the US wanted that information to fight fraud. Now Belgium is asking for information and suddenly privacy becomes an insurmountable issue.

I'm not defending the way this requesting and sharing of information is going, and I'm not defending Belgium for trying to bypass privacy laws, but I do think it's awfully hypocritical of the United States to quickly hide behind their privacy laws after making us change ours.

And another thing - why do people immediately suggest to "Put Belgium to Sleep" when it causes a problem in the international community? Instead of focusing on the issue at hand, they think dividing this country among its neighbors will fix everything? In a discussion about American sovereignty on a very important issue, don't forget to respect Belgian sovereignty on an even more important one. The continued existence of the Belgian state is something its citizens, and its citizens alone, should decide about.