
Canadian court ruling orders Google to block sites worldwide - tempestn
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/the-law-page/bc-court-seeking-global-reach-orders-google-to-block-sites/article19212708/
======
bambax
This is insane.

The plaintiff, Equustek Solutions Inc., says the main defendant, Morgan Jack,
sells networking devices that infringe on their trademark.

The defendant sells these things online; the plaintiff wants his websites to
be dereferenced from Google.

The court agreed and asked Google to remove the links on all its properties
worldwide (not just google.ca).

But what does Google have to do with this?

Why does the plaintiff not go after the infringer, to shut his websites down
and/or fine him and/or get him in prison?

Telling Google to remove the links (worldwide!!) is like issuing an injunction
against all restaurants the world over to stop selling food to anyone called
"Morgan Jack" in the remote chance it will have an effect on his business.

~~~
Natsu
Some part of me wonders what would happen if they were to turn off Google to
Canada for a day and list the judge's phone number as the person to complain
to.

(Probably one very angry judge, but I wonder...)

~~~
kryptiskt
Sounds like something from here would apply:

"Contempt of Court includes the following behaviours:

\- Fails to maintain a respectful attitude, remain silent or refrain from
showing approval or disapproval of the proceeding

\- Refuses or neglects to obey a subpoena

\- Willfully disobeys a process or order of the Court

\- Interfere with the orderly administration of justice or to impair the
authority or dignity of the Court"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#Canada](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court#Canada)

~~~
tezza
I agree, out and out Contempt of Court.

Further, the Judge themselves is in charge of deciding whether Contempt of
Court has occurred.

No possible jury to convince or appeal to, just the judge.

They can have you imprisoned in under a day.

Contempt of Court is very serious.

~~~
vacri
_They can have you imprisoned in under a day._

Only if you're in their jurisdiction. And Google isn't a person to jail. And
corporations have a way of making these things not attributable to any one
person.

However, it would be better to state the argument given by the law professor
in the article: "what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay
and lesbian sites from its database". Find something that the judge cares
about personally, and you'll find a country that opposes it. Google can also
complain that it's being targetted - why not Bing? Yahoo? Any other search
providers? Does Wikipedia have a page for the company? What about reseller
companies, that resell the competitor - not only are they facilitators,
they're witting facilitators? What about sites with user reviews? At what
point do we draw the moral line about shooting the messenger?

~~~
Confusion

      And Google isn't a person to jail. 
    

Which nicely illustrates one of the major problems of having granted
corporations 'legal person' status: the punishments for various crimes were
originally intended to punish natural persons and have never been sufficiently
adapted to punish corporations. What's a proper punishment for flagrant
contempt of the court by a corporation?

    
    
      And corporations have a way of making these things not 
      attributable to any one person.
    

That is in fact their raison d'être.

~~~
davidw
> That is in fact their raison d'être.

This looks like an example of @ziobrando's "Bullshit asymmetry principle" in
action. You whip out some bullshit (unless I'm really misunderstanding what
you are saying) in a one liner with no citations, but to refute it, someone
would have to talk about the history of corporations, legal theories around
them, compare and contrast with societies that never developed a similar idea
(an interesting take on things: [http://www.amazon.com/Long-Divergence-
Islamic-Held-Middle-eb...](http://www.amazon.com/Long-Divergence-Islamic-Held-
Middle-
ebook/dp/B0046A9MA4/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=&tag=dedasys-20)
), and so on and so forth. That's a lot more effort than simply spouting some
snark.

~~~
ctdonath
Thank you. I have long been trying to pin down the description of, and term
for, that principle. [http://t.bigboxcar.com/post/87256202522/bullshit-
asymmetry-p...](http://t.bigboxcar.com/post/87256202522/bullshit-asymmetry-
principle-via)

There's still a corollary in need of succinct definition/labeling: in context
of a casual discussion, you make a fair point in a one liner with no citation,
then someone criticizes it (in effect) for lacking peer-reviewed encyclopedic
depth & thoroughness. (Ex.: "this car does 0 to 60MPH in 10 seconds" "uh, NO,
you're not taking relativity into account! and you didn't cite any certified
testing labs!" and from social context you feel compelled to elaborate on why
your comment was sufficient, while the other loudly labels you a liar, ignores
your objections, and marches off to disrupt other sane conversations.)

~~~
Confusion
Which is why I'm not going to challenge the accusation of 'bullshit'. I don't
think the principle applies here.

It does suggest I need to clarify that I believe that it is both the great
strength and the great weakness of corporations.

------
toyg
Justice systems the world over have been itching for a way to force this whole
_interweb thing_ to fall in line for more than a decade, but they couldn't
find a solid-enough target in a quickly-changing landscape. Now that things
have matured, they are going after the big established players: Google for
search/advertising, Facebook for social activity, Twitter for
censorship/regulated speech, Amazon for commerce, Youtube for copyright. It
will happen more and more and there is no way around it. The classic cyberpunk
countermeasure of finding a friendly nation to hide behind just doesn't work
in the long run, as Sweden has proven with the PirateBay case.

It might be an unpopular opinion here, but I believe the rise of a global
network will inevitably force the rise of a global government. A higher
authority is now necessary to sort out this sort of problems in a consistent
way. It's the natural evolution we've seen in the past when trade and
knowledge networks reached a dimension where differences in legislation made
it too difficult for them to flow. The question is: how do we define this
global government? Which interests will it represent in practice? I think it's
something we should embrace, because otherwise we will be forced to accept it
at the point of a non-metaphorical gun.

~~~
tempestn
I expect at least in the medium term it will look more like a global (or at
least multilateral) treaty, rather than a global government. But I agree that
now is the time to think about how we could like such a thing to be
structured. As much as some people would like it to be, the internet can't be
the new wild west forever. It will be regulated. The hope is to have it
regulated in a fair, consistent, and manageable (minimal?) manner.

As a web-based business owner, I find the prospect of having to comply with an
increasing list of obscure regulations from various different entities rather
overwhelming. Something comprehensive could be a relief, if it's done right.
(Of course, there will still be differences between countries, but perhaps an
overarching treaty could at least limit their impact.)

~~~
gorklin
Good luck regulating my encrypted anonymized connection.

~~~
tempestn
The regulation would be on the other end. Tor won't help you when your
favorite site shuts down because they can't comply with conflicting court
orders from Canada and Australia (or wherever).

~~~
gorklin
Sure it will -- they could run it (at some loss of bandwidth) as a hidden
service. When "my favorite site" gets court orders, they can take down their
official server, and spin it up somewhere else behind a Tor hidden service.

Yeah, I know -- Hidden Services need some work. As I understand, the problem
is solvable, it just needs a few more heads thinking about it to get solved.

------
austerity
This shit needs to end. Even the obvious jurisdiction overreach aside, what
happened is the court ordering Google - a party not in any way involved in the
conflict at hand - to withhold information from the public. The idea that this
"western" form of censorship is in any way better than, say, the blocks on
porn in Pakistan or political censorship in Russia is either extremely short-
sighted or simply serves somebody's interests (as in case of the plaintiff
lawyer here). How it is OK for anyone to have such authority is beyond me.

------
avz
It's not only about free speech. Different cultural, social and economic
conditions mean different countries live by different laws.

I don't know the circumstances of the case, but it seems plausible that given
an opportunity a German, Emirati, Chinese or Brazilian court may reach a
different conclusion as to the legality of Morgan Jack's business. Countries
are known to have very different labor and copyright laws. It's plausible that
some circumstances (e.g. mistreatment, authorship, limitations on copyright
transferability, nuances and even legality of the contract the parties had
entered) could make courts elsewhere consider Morgan Jack to be the rightful
owner of the design.

What if such a court elsewhere made a contradictory ruling and also demanded
from Google that it be enforced worldwide?

~~~
caf
At a guess, this is the risk you take by doing business in two or more
jurisdictions: you might be subjected to two mutually-incompatible rulings, in
which case your only alternative is to stop doing business in at least one of
those jurisdictions.

~~~
avz
Assuming courts you deal with don't overreach like the B.C. court just did,
you can easily resolve this problem by complying with each law within each
respective jurisdiction.

This is made easier by the fact that your company is usually represented by
separate local legal entities whose business is within each jurisdiction.

~~~
pjc50
Which jurisdiction is a web page in? Where it's hosted, where it's controlled
from, where its ads are served from, where it's read, where its payment
processing is done?

~~~
avz
A website may be complex enough and distributed enough to straddle multiple
jurisdictions (this isn't an entirely new situation though since similar
issues came up with radio spectrum regulations).

The bottom line is this: your jurisdiction extends as far as your control. A
court may be able to issue injunctions against the systems which are located
on its jurisdiction which may only be a subset of systems supporting a given
site. In places where it is legal, it may also censor the internet. If
everything from hosting, through advertising, payments and readership are
outside the jurisdiction then it can do nothing directly and must resort to
seeking assistance from foreign jurisdictions. I'd say in those situations it
is entirely appropriate.

------
jacquesm
I fail to see how this judgment is any different from those where the courts
ordered ISPs to block sites like the piratebay. If you're ok with one kind of
interference about third parties linking to stuff you should probably be ok
with all of them, and if you're against interference in this case you should
probably be against interference in general.

It's very hard to argue consistently that the one is ok and the other is not.
I strongly believe any kind of interference is bad. If you have beef with
someone sue them, don't involve the facilitator.

~~~
phantom784
I think the difference here is that the court is asking Google to remove the
links worldwide, not just for people accessing Google from within Canada.

~~~
jacquesm
There was a similar case a few years ago with Yahoo vs France, iirc France
prevailed:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/news/04iht-
yahoo.2.t.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/news/04iht-yahoo.2.t.html)

------
forrestthewoods
Haha. What a hilariously nonsensical ruling. The United States should quickly
issue a ruling that expressly forbids Google from blocking sites in Canada.
Then we can fight over it!

As a I would like to see all countries in which Google has an office claim
their nation's full tax rate on Google's worldwide revenue. All rates combined
I think it might be possible for Google to owe ten dollars in taxes per
dollars of revenue.

~~~
pjc50
There's already a US law limiting the extent to which UK libel damages are
enforceable.

~~~
kps
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_Act)

------
paulgb
Direct link to the ruling: [http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-
txt/SC/14/10/2014BCSC1063.ht...](http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-
txt/SC/14/10/2014BCSC1063.htm)

~~~
jt2190
The ruling is very clearly written, and does an excellent job of explaining
the difficulty the British Columbia Supreme Court is was faced with in this
decision.

------
PinguTS
Not that new. Most of the DMCA take down notices are also executed worldwide.

~~~
tomp
DMCA take downs are only effective because Google is a US company. If I have a
company in e.g. Slovenia, DMCA is ineffective, and they would have to go
through Slovenian courts to take down the website (unless they just seize the
domain).

~~~
tempestn
Yes and no. Some countries (Canada being one) have treaties with the US that
let court judgements in one country be enforced in the other. So even if you
have no assets in the US or income from the US, a US court decision could
still affect you if you live in such a country.

Of course, most internet companies do do some business in the US.

------
kamjam
So I am going to assume that the plaintiff will also be filing against Bing,
Yahoo and all the other search engines individually too? Cos you know, Google
is not the only search engine out there...

~~~
toyg
It's more likely that, if this trend continues, Google itself will eventually
drag competitors through the courts to force them to comply with rules they
are forced to obey. Or they might lobby the US Congress or EU Parliament to
pass laws that "clarify the position of all search engines".

------
throwwit
The Internet is going to become a country-by-country intranet at this rate.

~~~
scrrr
The world wide web. Off topic, but I think we tend to forget that most
legislation affects websites. Nothing keeps you from writing your own version
of DNS, your own protocol (who says it has to be HTTP) etc. That's the beauty
of TCP/IP! :)

~~~
toyg
They'll just start writing laws regulating TCP/IP instead. They already do in
China, after all.

There is no technical answer to this sort of problems.

------
Fuxy
At this rate google is going to shit.

By the time every court in the world is done removing all the stuff they want
the only thing left will be cats.

There won't be any porn though that is too controversial.

------
chatmasta
The article is quite sparse on details of what, exactly the website is
selling. Has anyone found a link to it?

~~~
paulgb
Plaintiff: [http://www.equustek.com/](http://www.equustek.com/)

Defendant: [http://www.gw1000.com/](http://www.gw1000.com/)

------
jt2190
tl;dr British Columbia Supreme Court determines that Google is conducting
business in British Columbia, despite no servers, facilities or employees in
the province, and can be ordered to remove links that infringe on the
plaintiff's intellectual property rights.

------
DanBC
What happens to Google if they comply in all of Canada but do not comply for
the rest of the world?

It would be cheaper for Google to offer specialist SEO and web design help for
these aggrieved parties - "here's how you get your story out and ranked higher
than the attack sites" \- than to fight legal cases through the courts.
Although I am pleased thay're taking the cases to court to defend their
position.

~~~
tempestn
Google was the defendant in this case, so they had little choice but to go to
court. Let alone the consequences to their Canadian business, US and Canadian
courts cooperate in enforcing judgements, so they couldn't ignore it
regardless. (Of course they are choosing to appeal, which is optional but
obviously a good idea given the pain this precedent could cause.)

~~~
briandh
> Google was the defendant in this case

No they weren't. In fact, the decision linked at the top of the thread
specifically refers to Google and Google Canada as "non-parties".

~~~
tempestn
Ah, right you are. Google was a non-party, but was named and served: "Non-
parties affected by Mareva injunctions are not normally before the Court,
because applications of that kind are brought without notice. Google was named
in this application, served with materials, and attended the hearing."

So the rest of the comment stands, but you are correct that they were not a
defendant.

------
caf
You would have to think that ceasing to do business in BC would be an option
competitive with accepting rulings like this in the future.

------
cmajewsk
Why only google? is that the only search engine that displays those links?

------
blueskin_
Does anyone know what this censored site is? Time for some Streisand Effect.

~~~
quasque
Apparently it's any site that sells the "Datalink GW1000".

------
peterarmstrong
If you think this is bad, just wait until July 1 and CASL gets introduced. As
a Canadian I'd like to apologize for this:

[http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2014/25293/how-
canadas-a...](http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2014/25293/how-canadas-anti-
spam-law-affects-email-marketers)

[http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm](http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-
lcap.htm)

~~~
phloxicon
Having consent, a person who can be replied to instead of ano-reply and a
mandatory unsubscribe doesn't sound so bad to me. What are the main arguments
against it?

~~~
peterarmstrong
Mandatory unsubscribe is totally fine, obviously.

But CASL includes making confirmation, welcome and update emails opt-in, or
else risking an up to $10 million dollar fine.

Yes, really.

Even if you're not a Canadian business, this will apply to you if you email
Canadians.

Yes, really.

Say goodbye to your opt-out email drip courses.

~~~
ovis
Wouldn't confirmation and welcome emails fall under "implied consent"?
[http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/infograph3.htm](http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/infograph3.htm)

Seems like update emails might too, depending on the circumstances.

------
kp25
Is Canadian court trying to change the definition of so called "Internet"..?
This is insane.

------
sigzero
I am pretty sure Google is not going to comply.

------
ertdfgcb
What happens if Google just says no? Fines?

~~~
atmosx
Hahahaha, that would be a good one. Probably extremely high fines. It's not
the way a democracy works to say _no_. The appeal was the only sensible way to
go.

The problem is not this case per se. The problem Google faces is the
precedent. If this goes through, every one who thinks that there is an
irregularity about a website will go to court in order to bring it down from
google.

If _many websites_ stop being listed on Google, people might start looking for
new search engines and... You can imagine how the story goes from there...

------
bane
"No"

now what?

Sorry Canada, I like you guys, but you don't really get to make rulings for
everybody else.

