
EU says social platforms can be ordered to take down unlawful content worldwide - techtonics
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wired-awake-041019
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matthewmacleod
This is an intentionally misleading headline which seeks to play into the US
tech community’s carefully nurtured scepticism about regulation originating
from the EU.

What has actually happened: the CJEU has decided that EU law does not place a
restriction on member states’ legal systems with regard to whether or not they
can issue injunctions or request content be blocked worldwide. It is a case of
the CJEU deciding that EU law does not affect existing processes.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Usually it's not the US tech community that carefully nurtures it, it's the
European tech community that hammers it at every possible opportunity.

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fock
Well, not sure what the EU really said (Wired might be biased towards "big-
tech" more than to strange European (or more likely: select-minority-being-
successful-in-interparty-fights) ideas of the rule of law) but as it stands
this is really concerning as it either shows

a) a neo-colonial relapse: Europe knows what's right for the world.

b) another step at the official adoption of authoritarianism on this world.
How about the Chinese government taking down any material on the existence of
Tinamen-Square-massacre (yeah, I know, it was just a peaceful sit-in and the
people just progressed to a higher plane of existence so there's noone left to
tell the story) or the existence of the NRC worldwide? It's great for business
certainly!

~~~
mytailorisrich
It shows neither.

The decision simply states that EU law does not prevent a national court from
specifying than an injunction to remove content from a platform should apply
worldwide, as long as it is otherwise legal to do so (it also complies with
international law, etc.). [1]

" _the Directive on electronic commerce, ..., does not preclude a court of a
Member State from ordering a host provider ... to remove information covered
by the injunction or to block access to that information worldwide within the
framework of the relevant international law, and it is up to Member States to
take that law into account._ "

[1]
[https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...](https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-10/cp190128en.pdf)

~~~
fock
Well, what kind of law is internationally valid (at the level, where American
presidents casually give orders for murder)? Do "hosters" now have to employ
lawyers having knowledge of all 193 "official" states on earth or otherwise
they risk getting sued again?!

~~~
pasiaj
Yes, you have to comply with laws in all the countries where they operate.

If Facebook were to pull out from France, there is almost nothing that France
could do to force Facebook to comply.

This is why Google left the Chinese market. They did not want (or, more
specifically, their employees refused) to comply with certain Chinese laws.

~~~
homonculus1
By "pull out" do you mean Facebook would have to stop doing business with
advertisers in France? As long as the servers are in another country, the
French government would have to create a Great Firewall to stop its citizens
from accessing that content.

~~~
tvxtergd
"As long as the servers are in another country, the French government would
have to create a Great Firewall to stop its citizens from accessing that
content." Not really.

How to avoid Great Firewall, while blocking FB:

France could expect Facebook to deny requests for content originating in
France, regardless of where FB servers are. No need for a Great Firewall; make
FB implement the firewall.

Legal justification (if not ethical):

The server locations are irrelevant because the data has cross the border into
France.

Enforcement (how to force FB to block itself):

Easy: make the executives criminally liable. Also, anyone working on FB
infrastructure could be held criminally liable.

France is a big and important country, they have heft to get their way from
companies like FB.

~~~
fock
Geoblocking is common and if they are doing business in a country it's
perfectly reasonable to expect them to do it as well as for the state taking
measures to enforce non-compliance (though criminal liability of corporate
executives is something we won't see anytime soon I guess).

What's not reasonable is to force them to block people in other countries (and
also those taking significant efforts to conceal their identity) - at least
there is no international law (compared to international deals) justifying
that anyhow.

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luckylion
Weirdly worded. Am I missing something? I understand this to mean that the
court (not the EU!) said that EU law doesn't forbid the take down orders that
are issued by EU members, it does _not_ say that EU law (or national law of
member states) is applicable world wide.

It didn't rule on whether a global take down notice is lawful, just that the
take down notice itself isn't unlawful in general.

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rahuldottech
Yeah, I don't know about this. If a certain item may be "unlawful" in the EU,
but not India. What then? Why should I not be able to see such content just
because some government halfway around the world has a problem with it?

Furthermore, take this hypothetical case: A government makes it illegal for
folks to share any information about ongoing crises/protests in the country on
social media. Does this mean that people _outside_ said country also won't be
able to talk about it on social media? That would be disastrous for discourse
on the internet as it exists today.

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buboard
... and then they can be sued for taking down content unlawfully... and they
we ll have supreme courts fighting each other

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mwyah
So basically what China does: take down content that is illegal according to
the way we see the world or exit our market.

~~~
isostatic
All fallout from the DMCA when the US decided it could police the world.

~~~
mwyah
I don't like censorship in any form, but I find stopping free speech to be
much more despicable than stopping piracy.

~~~
isostatic
Not sure how the DMCA prevents people in boats from hijacking ships, but your
view isn't of any relevance, what's of relevance in France is France's view.

The DMCA allows people in non-US countries, working for companies in non-US
countries, who have broken no law in those countries, to fall under arrest if
they accidentally get into U.S. jurisdiction.

So when complaining that people in the U.S. who don't break U.S. law, may be
prevented from doing business in France if they've broken French law, think
back to what you sewed 20 years ago when the FBI decided that U.S. courts had
global jurisdiction and arrested foreign citizens for not obeying.

The age of American exceptionalism is over.

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codingslave
They cant stop the internet, and neither can China. Technology will move too
fast for these governments to get an iron grip, the cat is out if the bag.

~~~
dooglius
China has clearly succeeded at this point, the internet is not a new thing
anymore.

