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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.
They're not ordering Google to delete results everywhere in the world; just on systems under their control. Which ends up being on the exact same servers they deleted the results for Canada (since google.ca and google.com are the same systems).
They put themselves under Canadian legal jurisdiction, so they can obey the order or they can leave. Which, IIRC, is what they did with China.
I'm not sure it's the best ruling, but short of lobbying the government to change the laws they're not going to change the result.
Log in or piss off.
Is this the same shitty reporting like last time with France, where the ruling only applies to .ca/.fr servers, not .com (but regardless from where it is accessed)? In that case, why should contries not be allowed to dictate the legitimacy of content served under their TLD.
In any case, with the US seeking jurisdiction to get access to servers worldwide one might ask, to what degree are countries allowed to execute their jurisdiction onto US servers?
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I think you missed the "worldwide" part of the decision. Google wasn't objecting to blocking in Canada, they just didn't think Canada should order a worldwide block.
They're not ordering Google to delete results everywhere in the world; just on systems under their control. Which ends up being on the exact same servers they deleted the results for Canada (since google.ca and google.com are the same systems).
This is precisely what is not happening. Google is in fact being ordered to delete the search results in all their servers, worldwide, not just on the servers that serve Canada (which just about everyone agrees falls within Canada's legal authority). That is, in fact, the entire point of the news story. I can understand not reading the story, but not even reading the headline? Even for slashdot that's impressive.
Anyways, yes, the news story is correct: Canada is claiming the power to order Google to globally de-index web sites in response to a court order.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Google could say they deleted the listings. As long as there is no way to access those listings from Canada, they would be compliant.
Not true. Read the article. It specifically says that for Google to comply, they need to de-index the listing globally. The court was very specific in how Google was to implement the injunction against it.
you should consider the intent of the court.
For the sake of argument let's consider it. Straight from the horse's mouth, the stated purpose of the case was to decide...
Whether Google can be ordered [...] to globally de-index websites of distributor [...] — Whether Supreme Court of British Columbia had jurisdiction to grant injunction with extraterritorial effect
In other words, they explicitly set out to rule on whether the injunction against Google could apply "extraterritorially" (i.e. beyond the court's authority), and they decided that it could. There was nothing accidental or incidental about the ruling applying internationally. It was neither the side effect you've claimed it was, nor, as you just suggested, was it left to Google to choose how to implement the injunction against them.
Does the fact that they made it clear they knew they were imposing their laws outside their borders have any effect on your thinking?
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
No. NAFTA Tribunal do not cover the facilitation of the unlawful sale of goods
Full disclose: Not being a lawyer, The following is just a lay person's bullshit.
As stated in the article, this was a
intellectual property case over whether judges can apply their own country's laws to all of the internet.
As the 7-2 ruling suggests, the decision is debatable. This is something NAFTA was made for. One of NAFTA's roles is to facilitate trade between favored nations and to protect business from unfair practices. In this case, chapter 11, NAFTA's investor-state dispute mechanism, allows Google to sue Canada in a secret tribunal. That Canada is the most successfully sued country under NAFTA could be one small point in Google's favor. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/nafta-chapter-11-investor-state-disputes-january-1-2015
A larger point is that the judges are applying Canadian law on the rest of the globe, something far beyond a mere local intellectual property dispute. The NAFTA Secretariat and the aforementioned tribunal could easily rule this extension of Canadian law an unfair practice. And in so doing, would negate the entire ruling.