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Google Must Delete Search Results Worldwide, Supreme Court of Canada Rules (fortune.com)
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled against Google on Wednesday in a closely-watched intellectual property case over whether judges can apply their own country's laws to all of the internet. From a report: In a 7-2 decision, the court agreed a British Columbia judge had the power to issue an injunction forcing Google to scrub search results about pirated products not just in Canada, but everywhere else in the world too. Those siding with Google, including civil liberties groups, had warned that allowing the injunction would harm free speech, setting a precedent to let any judge anywhere order a global ban on what appears on search engines. The Canadian Supreme Court, however, downplayed this objection and called Google's fears "theoretical." "This is not an order to remove speech that, on its face, engages freedom of expression values, it is an order to de-index websites that are in violation of several court orders. We have not, to date, accepted that freedom of expression requires the facilitation of the unlawful sale of goods," wrote Judge Rosalie Abella.
Google should delete all references to Canada. Wipe them off the face of the map. Blame Canada!
what's that, about 4 or 5 SCOTUS equivalents?
and do they wear toques, while listening to YYZ?
Canada is certainly feeling a new sense of self importance dictating decisions for the whole world.
This is quite horrifying. If Canada thinks that Canadian courts can order Google to delete results everywhere in the world, then the same argument says Chinese courts can order Google to delete results everywhere in the world.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
People complain loudly that the United States tries to impose its laws on the rest of the world. Canada is doing exactly this, and in a way that definitely harmful to free speech. Surely all of you will be consistent and express the same outrage toward Canada that you routinely do toward the United States.
Jillions.
TRUMP powa!
It's up to us to work around this. We need unfiltered search engines that answer to no authority, instead of all this bickering on who has what rights.
It would seem Canada's court is claiming global jurisdiction. I think quite a few governments would have a problem with that.
I deeply apologize for my fellow countrymen and women being morons.
So what? Google is rich, let them pay the fine instead of complying. I'd like to see the Court actually compel Google to do...anything.
Google needs to move all of its servers out of Canada and leave completely because this shit is no good for anyone. The Canadian Supreme Court just fucked up big time.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Gone the way of the hethites...
Ho ho ho. Canada sure has become overly arrogant when it thinks it can infringe on the sovereignty of
other countries by deciding global bans as if it represents the whole world.
Canada seems to have been infected by the world policing complex of USA and Russia.
How about the world flood the Canadian Supreme Court with nice messages and letters to
stuff its head back into its own ass instead of putting its nose into foreign asses like a dog?
Have gnu, will travel.
How is it possible for them to enforce that outside of Canada? Or are they counting on Google being willing to destroy free speech world-wide at the bequest of a foreign nation? Isn't that illegal on Google's part to do? (i.e. they derive their authority as a corporation from the US government, the US government doesn't have the authority to stop free speech so it logically lacks the right to give that ability to a corporation.)
For Google to setup a separate Google search engine for Canada?
..."It doesn't matter that your judge believes his country has worldwide jurisdiction. The fact is, no country decides what the internet looks like. Not Canada, not China, not the U.S. We will follow the order within the jurisdiction it is legal to do so."
Seriously, this is an embarrassing overreach, and that judge should be disbarred. No country has de-facto jurisdiction everywhere, else China would have a lot more influence in the West.
So Canada agrees with the U.S. that Canadian pharmacies illegally selling prescription drugs to Americans should be de-indexed from Google worldwide.
Whether this is a free speech or an illegal trade is irrelevant and a straw man. The key issue is whether another country can apply their laws in your country. Maybe considering a case with Canada on the benefiting end of the "illegal" trade might give the judges some perspective.
You have no extraterritorial jurisdiction, you hosers! Fuck off, eh?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The point is not whether this ban threatens free speech, it's if one country can demand a global ban. If Google complies with this, what's to stop say Saudia-Arabia for demanding gay porn be delisted from Google world-wide? If Canada can force Google to delist sites from Google Saudi-Arabia, then Saudi-Arabia can force Google to delist sites from Google Canada. How can they not see that this sword cuts both ways?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm deeply disappointed that this even came to a judge's decision, let alone the resulting order.
The threat to free speech is not "theoretical". It is real and the first shot has just been fired.
I can't help but think that Music Canada played a part in this decision.
Just wait until the Saudi court rules on photos of unveiled women...your girlfriend will have to take down all her selfies, worldwide! Or better yet, Facebook et. al. will do it for her. If we play this right, and play each regime against the other, we can probably get all data banned, everywhere, which would be good for a laugh.
..that the US is not the only country with moronic judges.
Aside from the fact that it's really hard to control the result of automatic scraping and people will figure out how to bypass automated blocks (witness the continued deluge of spam), it's hard to envision any reason a Canadian court order should govern activities wholly outside Canada.
Search results shown in Canada, or to Canadians around the world who log in allowing their nationality to be known -- maybe the court has something to say about this.
Appearance of Canadian companies and persons in search results shown around the world -- maybe the court has something to say about this (it includes "right to be forgotten" exclusions as a special case)
One could even imagine the court issuing an opinion on both of those at once.
But an order regarding non-Canadian results of non-Canadian searches? The court has ceased to act lawfully.
About time Canada showed it owns the Internet and the satellite connections it uses.
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Technically, the Canadian Constitution, and the British Columbian subset, give all Canadian citizens rights throughout the world.
Including the innate right to Privacy, ennumerated in the actual Constitution as part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In fact, it applies in space as well.
Don't mess with Canada. They have far better snipers than you do. And they don't waste scarce loonies and toonies on nuclear weapons, which are pretty much useless.
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One thing is to force Google from taking webpages that deals on piracy in Canada.
Another thing is to make the spurious presumption that the supreme court of any given country is able to enforce it's decisions for the rest of the world, which it so obviously cannot as it does not have the jurisdiction to do so.
What kinda quack judges are those not to understand such a simple thing?
Google Must Delete Blasphemy Worldwide, Supreme Court of Sumeria Rules
The Sumerian Supreme Court, however, downplayed this objection and called Google's fears "theoretical." "This is not an order to remove speech that, on its face, engages freedom of expression values, it is an order to de-index websites that are in violation of several court orders. We have not, to date, accepted that freedom of expression requires the facilitation of blasphemy against the most terrible name of Gozer (all cower in her presence)," wrote Judge Vinz Clortho.
For any country to think they can force their political views on a company operating out of another country. I wonder, if Google has no Canadian offices, no Canadian employees, what, if anything, can Canada actually DO to enforce this ruling? Can't Google ignore the ruling? Wouldn't some Libertarians argue they have a moral obligation to ignore the ruling? (since it obviously infringes on the freedom of speech, and negatively effects Googles customers)
Sorry.
I'm not sure what's possessed our supreme court on this one. This is a clear violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Hopefully our government will correct the decision through legislation.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Google should not be able to share information that is in violation of a local area. You have to delete the results world wide otherwise people will just use VPNs.
so they usually side with property. If you want them to side with people you have to pass laws.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Religions other than Islam are illegal in Saudi Arabia. If a Saudi Arabian court rules that "illegal" Christian/Jewish/Buddhist websites should be deindexed worldwide, surely Google would not respect that. What makes this case any different?
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
There is one big difference compared to the US though in that the Attorney-General of Canada was arguing AGAINST the court granting this injunction for all the reasons about territorial jurisdiction being discussed here (see the last paragraph of the article). It's still a bad decision but at least our government understands and, since they write the laws this might get fixed.
"if Google has no Canadian offices"
They have plenty of offices and employees in Canada.
Canadian law professor Michael Geist asks:
"Google will obviously abide the ruling, but as I noted last year, what happens if a Chinese court orders it to remove Taiwanese sites from the index? Or if an Iranian court orders it to remove gay and lesbian sites from the index?"
In-freaking-deed what?
As a Canadian, I find this court ruling, well, sucks.
You're exactly wrong on how government behave. If it extends the power of government, government is in favor of it. This ruling allows any government to order deletion of whatever they want.
This will only create a vacuum.
I bet there will soon be a whole host of .ca sites with tag lines like, "what google cant show you", "forbidden links", "unburned index"
Time to register some domains...
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
The simpler and better solution is for Google to temporarily delete Canada from it's search results for one week (but don't tell Canada when it will be reinstated). The economic loss to Canada will be so great the current administration will crumble. Cooler heads will rise from the rubble. Other countries will take heed and stop this nonsense of trying to apply their domestic laws internationally.
Technically, the Canadian Constitution, and the British Columbian subset, give all Canadian citizens rights throughout the world.
Including the innate right to Privacy, ennumerated in the actual Constitution as part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In fact, it applies in space as well.
Don't mess with Canada. They have far better snipers than you do. And they don't waste scarce loonies and toonies on nuclear weapons, which are pretty much useless.
I'm not understanding how that's relevant. I said that it's reasonable for a Canadian court to have an opinion about Canadian persons and companies appearing in search results.
This isn't about rights of Canadians. This is about rights of non-Canadian searchers to see non-Canadian results.
Any court in this world thinking that it can say what goes on worldwide is insane.
Haven't seen anyone commenting as if they have read the article yet. The company being removed was caught buying products, slapping their name on it, and reselling those products. The web pages in question are all directly related to THAT issue, but were lingering around cuz of the way the Internet works. That caused a continuing detrimental effect on the original manufacturer. The courts have simply said to remove those lingering links. This is a much narrower application of law than the typical "free speech" issue everyone is making this out to be. (and just to be plain, I'm Canadian. Sorry.)
No, it's about the rights of Canadians not to have pervy Americans spying on them, and indexing the results, and then warehousing the result sets in Ireland.
Why do you think we created the Internet in the first place? It was so we could get beam time and send ASCII and EBCDIC jokes to each other on our ribbon LEDs.
Not for your amusement.
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If Google simply stopped answering requests from any Canadian IP address, wouldn't that accomplish the intent of the injunction?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Cant they delete the results from google.ca and let Canada block google.com from their citizens? That's what happens in China. China and Canada even start and end with the same letters. Maybe Colombia, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Croatia and Czechia could get on board too
If US law or court rule that US company doesn't have to do it, what happens?
Take your globalist agenda and cram it, IMO.
Google are a bunch of suckers if they cave to this.
IMO Google should sit on their wallet for a little bit and quit servicing Canada and Europe for a year or two.
Google: "Why, thats dumb, we lose money"
But Google, you also get to show Canada that they could really be more like China if they'd just STFU and do what China does.
Its a confusing day for me when having to tell Canadians to go pound sand like the Chinese with that anti freedom BS.
Why aren't they just doing what China does?
Why would they when they can just fine Google into doing it themselves?
Don't play ball Google! Block Canada! Now they don't have to see anything!
We only know how to solve problems one way, but we're afraid we might hit some hobbits with bombs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You dont get to impose your irrational fears on a company in another sovereign nation. F-U.
Let it henceforth be known and understood that the
SUPREME COURT OF BOKKI WOKKI
In a unanimous decision HAS RULED THAT: defendant Google/Alphabet is to delete all search results for "Microsoft", "Microsoft Corporation", "MSFT" and "Windows 10" with immediate effect and world-wide.
Big EGO, Chief Justice
But seriously, Google should shut down Google.ca and just say F it, goodbye Canada.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Naomi Klein's totalitarian communism wins again.
It's a temporary restraining order against a company that fled BC to, perhaps, France, and is selling stolen networking technology. It's not an attempt to censor someone's opinions, but to hunt down a thief.
There is tons of non-puff-pirce commentary, though:
and also two dissenting opinions from the judges in the case, available to everyone at https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/s... where they question how long it should apply.
I'm also pleased to note that one of the first steps cited by the court, in 2017 scc 34, was an injunction "issued by the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordering D to cease operating or carrying on business through any website."
This is a great improvement, IMHO, over cases in the EU where Google was ordered to cease indexing sites which were not similarly ordered to cease their actions.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
What makes a court in Canada any different from a court in Pyongyang?
When a court in Pyongyang demands that google remove any references to any media that kim jong un personally dislikes, should they comply?
How about when courts in ultra conservative states like saudi arabia demand removal of anything which violates their laws, much of which would be perfectly legal in canada and other countries?
We'd end up with a lowest common denominator internet, containing only things which are legal and acceptable everywhere, which wouldn't be very much.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Someone let Canada know that they are not a global power in a position to make rules for the rest of the world to live by... They have 35 million citizens (less than California or about 10% that of the US), their GDP is $1.5T (California is $2.5T for about the same population) and they are ranked 25th in military power (behind North Korea, Poland and Taiwan) http://www.globalfirepower.com...
Google is a US company doing business in Canada, and unless they want to get in a pissing match with the US they need to get a US court order if they want to reach beyond their national borders. Google needs to get the state department to inform Canada that they have no jurisdiction outside of Canada and Canada sure as hell can't censor a US company on it's own.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Oh how painfully stupid can they be? Half a second brings up an example: a judge in Iran wants Google to ban all images of women not wearing Hijabs --worldwide. Suddenly the freedom of expression of hundreds of countries gets trampled. China wants all references to Chinese dissidents banned, worldwide. Suddenly no one is allowed to talk about China. Rinse repeat the King of Thailand. Rinse repeat North Korea. Rinse repeat Russia/Putin/Voting. Rinse repeat Donald Trump. Rinse repeat Recep Tayyip Erdoan (Prime Minister of Turkey). I had an uncle who thought it was stupid for 'internet hippies' to ban spam and thought internet advertising was a legitimate business use. Fast forward 5 years and having to delete hundreds of ads for viagra and porn, he changed his tune. But once things start, there is no going back. Supreme Court of Canada, supremely stupid. Not theoretical or theatrical, but really really shortsighted and stupid.
that just indexes the internet been respectful of any robots.txt like settings..
Freedom to search.
Freedom to read any results.
Start using US legal protections as a unique selling point and sell freedoms to the world.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
US courts have no jurisdiction in Canada, so they have no way to prevent Canada from punishing Google for non-compliance of a Canadian ruling.
They think their people
Delete the supreme court and parliament of Canada from search results, after all they are in violation of Sharia law.
Either laws are enforced globally or they are not.
- Though I suspect that the ruling is actually that copyright is based on the Berne convention, which covers just about every country in the world.
Canada doesn't have worldwide jurisdiction. It's their opinion.
So much wrong with that phrase...
Canadian, for one.
"Supreme" Court - for the other. How 'democratic' - an unelected judge or judges gets to decide policy - and worse than that - WORLDWIDE policy.
Canada has a Zionist occupied government, and this is yet another example of it.
A corporation in their country does not have human rights. They can stop a corporation in their country from doing things anywhere they operate. it's simple. If the corporation wants to operate and benefit from the powers governments bestow upon them they must abide by whatever the government says. Google can leave Canada or whatever nation or operate without incorporating a local branch in that nation (however that is possible.) Seems to me one of the many loophole tricks with subsidiaries would be a way to get around such things.
DO NOT CONFLATE HUMAN RIGHTS WITH CORPORATIONS! They do not have free speech rights.
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Pirated stuff is obviously illegal. If you're in Canada. And a lot of other places.
Wine is illegal in Saudi Arabia (and many other countries).
Free speech is illegal in China, Russia and many other places.
Democracy is illegal in North Korea.
You can call it Racism.
Casteism
Google Canada is at the mercy of Canada. Google USA can ignore Canada.
They LEGALLY incorporate in countries they do business in. They can leave Canada but still be accessible and ignore laws but they will have trouble doing business in the country.
I guess I should incorporate a criminal enterprise in another country and then claim the government can't touch me because I'm not breaking any laws because I'm doing so in another nation... So I'll sell drugs in your country with my corporation if you sell them with your corporation in mine?
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