Canadian Court Orders Google To Remove Websites From Its Global Index

An anonymous reader writes In the aftermath of the European Court of Justice "right to be forgotten" decision, many asked whether a similar ruling could arise elsewhere. While a privacy-related ruling has yet to hit Canada, Michael Geist reports that last week a Canadian court relied in part on the decision in issuing an unprecedented order requiring Google to remove websites from its global index. The ruling is unusual since its reach extends far beyond Canada. Rather than ordering the company to remove certain links from the search results available through Google.ca, the order intentionally targets the entire database, requiring the company to ensure that no one, anywhere in the world, can see the search results.

Comments

Call CDC

[Thanshin]

Call the CDC! Extra national lawmaking is contagious!

Re:Call CDC

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The CDC already is aware -- we're patient zero.

Internet

[NotInHere]

At least the canadian judges do at least understand how the internet works, when they requested a global ban. However, rulings like these will create a (black?) market for disclosing information. The court is only giving more value to the information, not stopping it spreading.

Re:Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

When your cat is stuck up a tree; shooting it gets it down... but that doesn't mean it is the proper course of action.

Assuming that Google is the tree and the fraudulent web site is the cat, one should not be cutting down the tree to get the cat out. Shooting the cat, in this case, would be a legitimate response.

Or as a car analogy: You don't tear out the road when one person is driving recklessly.

Re:Internet

[Stolpskott]

Or as a car analogy: You don't tear out the road when one person is driving recklessly.

The car analogy would be accurate if the order was for the internet to be removed. In the Google case, it is more like "Someone is using a road to drive recklessly in Arse-end-of-nowhere, Ontario, CA. People who go to this God-forsaken place usually have a paper map made by Company X, so we are ordering Company X to remove Arse-end-of-nowhere from their maps."

Note, I am NOT suggesting that Ontario is the Arse-end-of-nowhere, but I do find it very troubling that a judge half way around the world from me thinks that my access to information on this matter should be curtailed. If the content is so objectionable, then the web host should be ordered to take the site down. As the plaintiffs in this case have named two Google entities as the non-party entities targeted for action, and the defendants as the individuals responsible for the actions that led to the case being brought, I see no action being taken to order the hosting provider to do anything.
If the rationale behind that lack of action on the hosting provider is that the hosting provider is outside Canadian jurisdiction, then the same rule must also apply to Google Inc., who are being ordered to comply with this ruling.

As a European, regarding the "right to be forgotten", I think it is a potentially good idea in some circumstances which is let down by dumb-assed execution opening the door for abuse by people and other entities looking to remove information of valid public interest.

Re:Internet

[AthanasiusKircher]

However, rulings like these will create a (black?) market for disclosing information.

Maybe. It depends on the information. There's lots of information on the internet that no one cares about. There's lots of minor stuff about individual people that might be mildly damaging to someone's personal reputation, but except in a few incredibly rare transactions (like that specific person trying to get a new job or something), no one will care.

A lot of the uproar about the "right to be forgotten" involves actual public records and information which were previously "public" but hard to access (in the sense that you could access them only by traveling to a paper archive somewhere or perhaps sending a written request for a document). Now they can be instantly searched and show up on Google -- but the world functioned reasonably well when many of those records were not so accessible.

So, will people really go out of their way and make a "black market" for this information? Only if it's actually valuable enough that they'd bother to find out if the internet didn't exist.

I think of Google like a giant card catalog in an old library. (Anyone remember those? For you youngsters, there was a cabinet with a bunch of physical index cards that had lists for all the books and items in the library.)

Deleting links from Google is like removing the card from the card catalog. The book still remains on the shelf for anyone to go look at it. And if it's a particularly well-known book, people will find it anyway through other means (go ask the librarian, learn the subject organization for cataloging which will allow you to locate it, etc.).

But if it's a book that's been sitting on the shelf for 100 years and is covered with dust, checked out only once in 1967 by a curious academic with a specific interest, removing the card from the catalog just means the book fades into even more obscurity.

The court is only giving more value to the information, not stopping it spreading.

It's not "giving more value" to it -- it's just making it harder to find. It only has value if people know it exists and are willing to pay someone else to find it. If people don't even know the thing exists, why would anyone pay?

But you do have a point about "not stopping it spreading." There's a reason that people who want to ban library books don't just rip the card out of the card catalog -- they want to actually remove the book from the library shelves. The problem is the process itself of banning something will call attention to the item under question, leading every teenager in the county to track down that "evil banned book" even if the reference is removed from the card catalog. Unless we remove the information from actual websites hosting stuff, rather than just the most popular search engine, it's still out there -- and court filings will just draw attention to it.

So, I would expect that to be the next stage in all these "right to be forgotten" cases -- the argument will be that requiring a court filing to get stuff removed will itself draw attention to the information, so we'll need secret court orders telling Google to take things down, or else we risk emphasizing the very information that people are asking Google to delete. And secret court orders of course are a recipe for abuse....

Re:Internet

[TangoMargarine]

If it's not possible to block/remove the data for just your country, so instead you have to block/remove it for the whole world, I think this demonstrates that the "right to be forgotten" is an unworkable idea. Why should your "right to erase the past" infringe on my right to be informed? Screw that.

Isn't this whole thing because people put undue weight on Internet slander anyway? We're trying to use a technological band-aid to fix a social problem.

Re:Internet

[Tom]

Well, they seem to be saying that they should be able to have the information removed from the Internet, so perhaps you could explain to me how it's really any different

Because "right to forget" is a specific legal construction that, aside from the small differences of location, jurisdiction and domain, applies to a specific subset of information in specific circumstances following a specific procedure.

This case was about denying easy access to an e-commerce entity that has already been found to be in violation of the law. Where "right to forget" is the equivalent of the law telling people to stop putting up posters saying "John is a child rapist!" ten years after he was acquitted in court, this ruling is the equivalent of telling the phone company to list "Mary's Fine Cocain Emporium" under M in its phone directory.

I skimmed the article and they point out that Europe's right to forget doesn't extend out of Europe, fine

Uh, not just "fine". That's kinda the elephant in the room. If the judge had references that right and somehow applied it to Canada, then you would have a point. But he doesn't. I stand by my words that mentioning it in the summary was just click-bait, because the submitter knew that it is controversial.

Um, if I understand this correctly...

[Primate Pete]

Canada doesn't like the things that are imported to Canada from Country X, so they've decided to sue the printers in Country Y who publish maps of the roads to Country X?

Re:Doesn't this already happen?

[stephenmac7]

No, the important part is that it's the global index.

Time to Learn Limits

[pubwvj]

It is time for the courts to learn that they do not have control outside their jurisdiction. Canada can not control what other people do in other countries. Google can store and release the data in other locations, other countries. Canada, at most, can only control what happens within their totalitarianism regime's boarders. If Canadians want a police state then they need to learn that the control ends at their borders. Time for Google to stand up and stomp down on these inanities.

Re:Time to Learn Limits

[u38cg]

Gosh, I wish I had years of training in multi-jurisdictional legal practice in order to be able to make such bold and sweeping statements.

Overreach as a bug, not a feature

[Jason Levine]

It looks like this judge fully understood the ramifications of stating that one nation's court could ban a company based in another country from displaying information in any country.

I will address here Google's submission that this analysis would give every state in the world jurisdiction over Google’s search services. That may be so. But if so, it flows as a natural consequence of Google doing business on a global scale, not from a flaw in the territorial competence analysis.

In other words, in this judge's opinion, since Google works on a global scale, they should be subject to the laws of all nations at once. Of course, all websites act on a global scale. Slashdot can be easily read in the United States, Canada, Australia, and likely even countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that all websites need to obey all nations' laws at once? Where they conflict, are we bound by the most restrictive ones? So while the USA would give Freedom of Speech, we must hold by the stricter laws from some Middle East countries banning the insulting of a certain prophet. Also, we must never mention a certain Chinese square or the incident that happened there. We won't even get into North Korean laws. (I'm sure at least one person there has Internet access even if it is just "Glorious Leader.")

Thank you, Mr. Canadian Judge for imposing the world's conflicting and restrictive laws on the Internet. I'm sure that this will result in a vast improvement in Internet content. I can see the countries with restrictive laws drooling in anticipation already.

Re:Overreach as a bug, not a feature

[lexarius]

There's a slight difference in that Google maintains physical offices and possibly datacenters in Canada. They only need to pay heed to countries in which they physically exist. Of course, Google could shut down physical operations in any country that dares try to legislate against it in a global fashion, but this has certain risks. You have to keep datacenters somewhere, after all, and preferably close to your customers.

Re:Overreach as a bug, not a feature

[xaxa]

She continues (I'll quote a lot, my emphasis at the end):

[141] Google gives as an example of such jurisdictional difficulties the case of Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racism et L’Antisemitisme [Yahoo]. In 2000 two French anti-racism groups filed a suit in France against Yahoo alleging that Yahoo violated a French law prohibiting the display of Nazi paraphernalia by permitting users of its internet auction services to display and sell such artifacts. The plaintiffs demanded that Yahoo’s French subsidiary, Yahoo.fr, remove all hyperlinks to the parent website (Yahoo.com) containing the offending content. As in this case, Yahoo argued that the French Court lacked jurisdiction over the matter because its servers were located in the United States. The French Court held that it could properly assert jurisdiction because the damage was suffered in France and required Yahoo to “take all necessary measures” to “dissuade and render impossible” all access via yahoo.com by internet users in France to the Yahoo! internet auction service displaying Nazi artifacts, as well as to block internet users in France from accessing other online Nazi material: 145 F Supp 2d 1168 (ND Cal 2001) at 1172.

[142] Yahoo claimed that implementing the order would violate its First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and therefore could not be enforced in the United States. The French Court did not accept that submission. Yahoo initiated a suit in California against the French plaintiffs, and obtained a declaratory judgment that the French orders were constitutionally unenforceable in the United States, contrary to the first amendment. Addressing the issue of international comity, the Court reasoned that United States Courts will generally recognize and enforce foreign judgments but could not do so on the facts of that case because enforcement of the French orders would violate Yahoo’s constitutional rights to free speech: 169 F Supp 2d 1181 (ND Cal 2001) at 1192-1193. This decision was ultimately reversed on different grounds: 379 F 3d 1120 (9th Cir 2004), reheard in 433 F 3d 1199 (9th Cir 2006).

[143] Yahoo provides a cautionary note. As with Mareva injunctions, courts must be cognizant of potentially compelling a non-party to take action in a foreign jurisdiction that would breach the law in that jurisdiction. That concern can be addressed in appropriate cases, as it is for Mareva injunctions, by inserting a Baltic type proviso, which would excuse the non-party from compliance with the order if to do so would breach local laws.

[144] In the present case, Google is before this Court and does not suggest that an order requiring it to block the defendants’ websites would offend California law, or indeed the law of any state or country from which a search could be conducted. Google acknowledges that most countries will likely recognize intellectual property rights and view the selling of pirated products as a legal wrong.

There goes Google

[LordLucless]

Google had better reject this order, or it's all downhill from here.

Germany orders Google to remove all mentions of Nazis. Saudi Arabia orders Google to remove all mentions of alcohol and extra-marital sex. The US orders Google to remove all mentions of the leaks published by Snowden/Manning/Assange.

How long until nothing is left, when every country in the world can expunge whatever they don't like?

Re:Doesn't this already happen?

[CastrTroy]

Otherwise, what's the point of removing it. It's trivial for users to search the Google index of other counties. I can search Google France by simply going to Google.fr. If "the right to be forgotten" does not extend outside your own country's borders, are you really forgotten?

Re:Doesn't this already happen?

[jlv]

There should be no "right to be forgotten" any more than a right to leach off the livelihood of others.

Re:Will Google comply?

[stenvar]

I am thinking they will not. Canada does not have the right to destroy information outside of its jurisdiction.

A Canadian court has jurisdiction over businesses in Canada and can enforce its rulings by fining them or stopping them from operating. Google can certainly refuse to comply, but they may have to stop doing business in Canada, and the Canadian court could block them.

I think the Canadian court is wrong, but don't make the mistake of thinking that these kinds of laws and rulings have no teeth. I also think that such rulings hurt the country issuing more than anybody else.

Re:Doesn't this already happen?

[xaxa]

That's the point the judge made.

He noted that an order from a French court to remove Nazi symbols from Yahoo.com failed, as the California court overturned it. But, he granted this order because he considers removing links to these websites (infringing "intellectual property", it doesn't say what kind) would be valid in most countries.

Just wait. . .

[smooth wombat]

until the Scientologists start asking to have all the web sites which outline their seedy, extortionist processes to be removed.

Sorry folks, you posted something on the web, it's available to everyone and this nonsense about removing web sites is completely anathema to the concept of the WWW.

Re:Doesn't this already happen?

[gurps_npc]

Yes. Because the right to be forgotten is not designed to destroy the evidence. Instead it is designed to make it just a little bit harder to destroy someone's life. If for example your ex-wife or girlfriend falsely accuses you of being a pedophile, then flees the country and keeps posting new blogs about how you had sex with her non-existent daughter, you still deserve the right to get a job. If google blocks you from just you countrie's version of google, then you can get a job. Some companies may check multiple versions of google, and reject you based on the slander, but not all will do it. The right to be forgotten is not designed to prevent anyone from finding out stuff, just to make it a little bit harder.

The time is right!

[Rambo Tribble]

Look for "Team Canada, World (Thought) Police" at a theater, (oh, sorry, "theatre"), near you!

Google Franshise

[ZombieBraintrust]

It seems Google should restructure its operations. It should split it search buisness into sepperate legal entities for some regions. These Google franshise's would purchase index data from the parent company. The franshise would have there own servers and have control over there own site. That Canada franshise would have servers in Canada and would sell advertisments on the Google.ca site. The parent company would keep all its assest in CA.

The trend continues

[argStyopa]

We knew that simple open policies would never stand in the face of governments who seem to have a vested interest in being invasive, provincial, and self-absorbed.

What I see here is a significant growth in the value of offshore, internationally-neutral server farms.

That, or Google could 'accidentally' remove all Canadian government link results from its data bases for a couple of months....just to see how they like a proprietary internet up there.

TFS, of course.

[Garfong]

Keep in mind the Supreme Court of BC is a trial court (despite the high sounding name). This could still be overturned on appeal.