
Google can be forced to pull results globally, Canada supreme court rules - fmihaila
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/28/canada-google-results-supreme-court
======
mattsfrey
This needs to be rejected whole sale. One nation does NOT have the authority
to dictate what a company can do outside of it's borders and concerns. The
censorship issues that have been cropping up lately in these regards are
appalling. The "hate speech" legislature of many EU nations comes to mind. If
that insanity were to be enforced "world wide" it's seriously time for new
service providers to step up that aren't so money hungry for those markets to
capitulate.

~~~
John_KZ
Exactly. Google should have subsidiaries in each nation it operates and obey
the local law - nothing more and nothing less. Canadia courts should not have
an effect on Mexico, and Iranian courts should not have an effect on the US.

Google can sell/offer it's services anywhere as long as it's legal.

~~~
tw04
So if Google operates a subsidiary in China, they should be completely immune
from a lawsuit in the US, if say, they sell your private personal info to the
highest bidder in that nation?

I don't see how that could be abused...

~~~
jerf
Your question at the moment is ill-defined. Carefully expand out the
nationalities of the "you" who is buying the info, the nationalities of the
person whom the info is about, the nationality of the subsidiary from which
the information is being purchased, and the nationality under which you
believe they should be suable. ("Jurisdiction", if you prefer, may replace
"nationality".)

There's a lot of combinations in there, and I don't think conversation can be
profitable had without being clear. It's fine to fill it in with variables,
too, I'm not asking for a concrete binding, but at the very least your
question as I read it now is missing whose information is being sold.

(Also note the ONLY thing I'm saying here is that you need to be more clear. I
am not making any claims of my own at this time, because before I can have an
opinion about an answer to a question, there needs to be a question.)

~~~
tw04
Chinese subsidiary, Chinese buyer, US citizen.

~~~
lowbloodsugar
Logically, for China Google to sell your data to Chinese Buyer, then US Google
must have sold your data to China Google. If it is illegal for US Google to
sell data to third parties, then US Google could be sued for selling that data
to China Google. However, since the USA is all about "Freedom meaning we can
do what the fuck we like with your data", and not "Freedom from persecution",
there's no reason that US Google couldn't do what you describe. If you were a
European citizen, and it was German Google selling your data to China Google
(or US Google), then that'd be a very different story.

It seems odd that you're worried about China, when you live in a nation that
has been proven to wiretap you by the government, and where private
transactions are authorized based on information which three credit score
companies store completely insecurely.

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jpiasetz
This has already been blocked by a US court [https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-
court-sides-with-google-aga...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-court-sides-
with-google-against-canadian-de-indexing-order/) so it's in the BC court to
get modified.

~~~
s2g
> threatens free speech on the global internet," wrote Judge Edward Davila of
> the US District Court for Northern California. Really, pulling listings for
> a counterfeit product is a free speech issue?

That's dumb.

~~~
sp332
_Google initially de-indexed 345 specific webpages associated with Datalink on
google.ca.

Equustek then sought an injunction to stop Google from displaying any part of
the Datalink websites on any of its search results worldwide._

Google already agreed to pull the listings. It's when they wanted the whole
website removed that they pushed back.

------
Nomentatus
Yes, the Canadian courts understand precisely how the internet works...
through Canadian ISPs who can be forced block traffic from some companies and
not others.

The point of the ruling could be summarized this way: "If you wish to do
business in Canada, with a web business that's visible in Canada, then there
are certain practices you can't be guilty of elsewhere or in general."

This isn't new. For example, it is commonplace for governments to forbid
domestic contracts with businesses who, elsewhere in the world, employ bribery
in their ordinary course of business. Same general concept here. Don't be too
surprised if tactics like this emerge elsewhere to combat online gambling, for
example, since gamblers and online gambling companies have been adept at
getting around superficial blocks.

It's also commonplace to allow lawsuits in the U.S. that seek to penalize
governments and other institutions for conduct that happened outside the U.S.,
but affected people in the U.S.

A previous parallel issue in Canada concerns the publication of Federal
Election results; I don't know how energetic Canada has been in enforcing it
lately, but the idea was to not allow Canadian media or ISPs to facilitate
publishing any election results outside a given Province until the whole
country had voted, since voters in the West might not even go to the polls if
they knew that the election had already been decided by votes in the East.
(Canada spans a lot of time zones.)

Given the difficulty of limiting information exchange over the internet there
aren't many alternatives to rulings that take into consideration a company's
conduct elsewhere before allowing them to freely communicate in one's own
country.

Whether you like the specific reason (trigger) for this principle being
invoked is an entirely different question I don't address here; but yes the
principle is logically coherent and enforceable.

It's also interesting to think about the controversial Fight Online Sex
Trafficking Act in the U.S. in this regard.

~~~
gruez
>but yes the principle is logically coherent and enforceable.

sounds great and all until oppressive regimes use this to do censor content
they don't like. how long until russia/china/iran sends a rubberstampped a
court order to censor a politcal candidate's advertisements because [made up
reason]?.

~~~
Analemma_
They're going to do that anyway. Why should Canada abandon its own national
sovereignty because of the actions of dictators on the other side of the world
that would happen regardless?

~~~
emiliobumachar
It's going to be a lot harder for Google to refuse global censorship orders
from countries you don't like when it's routinely taking global censorship
orders from countries you like.

~~~
Nomentatus
I agree, so I think there's at least room for a treaty between free countries
as to what they could do to restrict internet traffic across borders, but
won't. The European right to forget legislation, which I should have
mentioned, makes any such agreement very tough, however, I suspect.

------
justherefortart
Terrible ruling, do they even understand how the internet works?

Oh well, when you're a global company, this is the BS you have to deal with.

~~~
IAmEveryone
Are you saying it's _impossible_ for Google to block some results globally?

Because even if I may agree with the sentiment, I don't see how technology is
the problem here–differences in law are.

And if technology were the problem, that'd be the weakest possible argument.
Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society
(democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific decision,
but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than whatever
Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
> _" Where ever possible, technology need to evolve to serve what society
> (democratically) decides. You and I may not agree with this specific
> decision, but the process that created it is still far more legitimate than
> whatever Google or, in other cases, two guys and a compiler come up with._"

 _Freedom_ , to the greatest extent possible, is what matters. Invoking 'the
legitimacy of process' really makes me cringe here as it's undoubtedly the
exact sort of logic that led people to let religious institutions hold back
the world for centuries. And that rule was not authoritarian in practice, even
if it may have been in law. Poll the masses of the time and you'd see a
democratic consensus for most of these incredibly backwards decisions that
held society back.

So to me the question is does a court in country A have a right to demand that
a company in country B behave differently in country C? Is this a reasonable
restriction of _freedom_? To me that seems to be a resounding no. Perhaps you
can argue there are good reasons for this, but please do so in means other
than invoking some appeal to 'legitimacy', whatever that's supposed to mean.

~~~
IAmEveryone
> Freedom, to the greatest extent possible, is what matters

What a useless platitude...

Any government anywhere reduces someone's freedom in some way. Yet not no
society has decided to forgo this mechanisms in the pursuit of pure "freedom".

If you actually believe in anarchistic utopias...fine. You're wrong, but many
people are. But otherwise simply screaming _freedom, freedom_ just isn't an
argument.

------
turc1656
So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other
jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a
court cannot legally force them to pull results globally? What do they do
then? I assume that since the US/other court wouldn't be forcing them, they
would default to pulling it since Canada can apparently force them to do so,
so pulling the data is mandatory in Canada but "voluntary" for the rest of the
world.

Far more importantly, a single country is now censoring the speech of
companies globally. That's a truly astounding verdict to issue in a court of
law. What about the sovereignty of all other nations?

~~~
dragonwriter
> So what happens when, for example, a US court or a court of some other
> jurisdiction in another country rules that their free speech laws say that a
> court cannot legally force them to pull results globally?

More interesting is when one sovereignty prohibits and imposes sanctions on
behavior mandated with sanctions for non-compliance by another sovereignty.
With various states adopting broad mandates for data retention while others
are adopting mandates for removal, there are likely going to be circumstances
where those conflict.

~~~
8note
that seems pretty simple, really: the company chooses one jurisdiction to
operate in

------
mcguire
So, Company A sues Company B. The Canadian courts enjoin Company B from
selling the products in question. Company B ignores the injunction. The
Canadian courts, because they can't think of anything better to do, request
Google to remove all evidence of Company B from their results.

One wonders if Bing/DDG/etc. also received such requests?

(Apparently not
([https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.co...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/NshX8iyFXX3vMJFY/www.bing.com\);)
the datatechgateways link doesn't seem to be in Google's results.)

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jacksmith21006
OMG, no. This is ridiculous and I love Canada.

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quantumofmalice
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it" \-- Andrew
Jackson (apocryphal)

------
ksk
Its interesting that Google is making a 'freedom of expression' argument when
they themselves heavily censor YouTube content. Google controls the platform
their users use, and the Government controls the 'platform' that both
companies and users use. I suppose nobody cares about the users in both cases.

~~~
eviltandem
Google is allowed to host or not whatever they want. They can do it wherever
they want. They are not a government.

A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally? That's
scary/stupid.

~~~
ksk
Actually, they are not allowed to do whatever they want. Nobody is, but okay,
believe that if you may.

>A government somewhere telling Google what they have to do globally?

If Google had individual companies in individual countries, with no data
(Google's property) being shared, you might have a point. Its a bit more
complicated than you make it sound.

> That's scary/stupid

I believe that things seem less scary or stupid if you take the time to
understand them.

------
asdfologist
Is this even enforceable?

~~~
bryanlarsen
Google sells over $2B worth of advertising to Canadians every year, plus a
bunch of phones and other services. If they're not willing to abandon that
revenue, it's certainly very enforceable.

~~~
mcguire
Depends. What happens to Google's worldwide revenue when they set the
precedent of removing information based on one country's legal findings. They
have previously shut down most of their services in _China_ , which seems like
it would be a bigger market.

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lovetrump
Let's break the Internet, one law at a time....

