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!

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

[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.

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.

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

[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?

[jlv]

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

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.