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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!
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
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.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
I sing Canada's praises but fuck this guy and, for this conversation, fuck Canada.
What is this "state compels you to change the indexing of a few search results we [lol] have picked out" supposed to be? Am I misunderstanding or did they demand the equivalent of "lower this guy's Yelp ranking."?
If you can forgive me for being in the same landmass with Trump, I can make an effort to distinguish you from your own Betters, who Know What's Best.
Looking at you, UK. Your peasant outrages may do nothing but at least I know you disagree.
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."
I *envy* you for being in the same landmass with Trump...
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
..that the US is not the only country with moronic judges.
About time Canada showed it owns the Internet and the satellite connections it uses.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
we can probably get all data banned, everywhere, which would be good for a laugh
Yeah, about as amusing as the Cambodian Genocide.
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?
No, they listen to Bryan Adams.
How is this in any way a threat to free speech?
I mean, putting aside the fact that Canada does not have any constitutionally protected rights to freedom of speech like the USA does, what's Canada going to do if Google decides to ignore the worldwide scope of the court order? Start fining Google? How will they collect it? Google is a USA company, not a Canadian one. Will Canada criminalize the use of Google services within Canada? (that'll be interesting, if they try it) As far as I can see there is virtually nothing that Canada can actually do to enforce the worldwide scope of this directive, so it impacts free speech about as much as it does if I tell somebody else to shut the fuck up.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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)
I mean, putting aside the fact that Canada does not have any constitutionally protected rights to freedom of speech like the USA does,
Freedom of speech in Canada is protected as a "fundamental freedom" by Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of the constitution.
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
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/
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.
Look at the good side: we'd have some privacy again.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You may want to read up on that a little more carefully.... there is *HUGE* difference between the freedom of speech as protected by the Bill of Rights in the USA and freedom of speech in Canada.
Section 1 of the Constitution Act 1982 gives Canadians the right to free speech, but only with "reasonable limits.". This is quite far removed from the absolute right that the US constitution has.
Section 13 bans the communication of any so-called "hate messages", which disparage certain groups of people, even if the communication was made in absence of any evident intent to cause physical harm (ordinarily a prerequisite for something to qualify as "hate speech" within the USA).
Any appearance of free speech that Canadians might believe themselves to enjoy is just an illusion, and only serves as evidence that the Canadians who think they actually have it simply haven't offended anybody badly enough yet.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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
The free speech right isn't absolute in the USA either. Pornography is a good example.
In general, pornography is legal in the USA. Certain classes of it are not (most notably if minors or depiction of minors are involved), and I'll concede the point that free spech is not entirely as absolute in the USA as I had said it was... but my point remains, the guarantee of free speech in the USA is *vastly* stronger than it is in Canada.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The big difference here is that the USA is economically powerful enough to that others will cater to the USA where the US wants because it makes the most economic sense for most other industrialized countries to do so..... Canada has about a tenth of the US's population, and is not nearly as significant on the global scale.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Enforcement is somewhat easy as long as Google has some physical presence in Canada. Any asset within Canada can be seized, and any employee within Canada can be charged.
The rest of your post is dead on though, this order creates a precedent that every single country google has a presence in has a veto over every single thing google does anywhere in the world. It would be impossible to run a business like that. It won't be long before you run in to conflicting orders from different courts where it's impossible to follow one order without breaking the other, and if you manage to avoid that, it would only be by effectively killing your own service by censoring almost everything to the point that your search engine is useless.
So you think it would be reasonable for every single country to have veto power over your personal searches anywhere in the world?
Meaning you can't access anything that any of the following (and more) regimes deem "offensive":
- North Korea
- China
- Iran
- Saudi Arabia
- Russia
That would prevent you from accessing anything religious, anything talking about rights for women, or LGBTQ people. You wouldn't be able to see news about Taiwan, or about the Ukraine, nothing where you might happen to see a woman who isn't in a full burka. And that's just the start. I suspect by the time you were done with the entire world you'd find that there is basically no content left that isn't censored by someone. We know there are many regimes around the world that are opposed to science, news, medicine, human rights, freedom of the press, and the list goes on.
It's bad enough to have to deal with the censorship of your own government, but to have to deal with the censorship of every single country in the world? no thanks!
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 sir, are a true Canadian. Live long and prosper in the great cold land of Canadia!
But young people would end up living in a world ruled by seniors who still remember how to live and function before there was an internet to order pizza delivered to mom's basement.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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.
White list for the rest of the world? Black list just for a nation? For every result in real time?
Get banned from the consumers in that nation?
If a per nation list fails in any way and a nations court has to revisit the issue?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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
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.
Canada doesn't have worldwide jurisdiction. It's their opinion.
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.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
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
You don't get it. You don't need to take down the photos offline, just that Google search won't return hits for it. Why is this so fucking hard to comprehend?
They're, asshole.
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?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news