
Google refuses to pay French privacy fine in a battle of company versus country - neverminder
http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/07/google-appeals-against-france-privacy-fine/
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chris_wot
Well this isn't going to go well for Google. At least I sure hope it doesn't.
When corporations trump nation-states, we're all screwed.

~~~
finch_
So then I suppose Google should have just given in to the Chinese government's
demands for censorship, or the US government's demands for access to private
data?

~~~
buro9
Yes.

I don't agree with either of those things, but there is a point at which
globalisation comes into conflict with sovereign nations.

The status of a company is one that is granted to it by a sovereign country,
and sovereign countries establish through their legal and government systems
how companies can act within their borders.

Once you're there... yes, Google should comply to any legal request. And in
fact, they do... as requests for data issued under legal order are in fact
complied with.

Companies are not above the law (and laws tend to exist at country level or
through treaty across many countries). And if the law of a country says pay,
then Google need to pay unless another law can trump it and says not to pay.

There's no two ways about it, companies must comply with the laws of whatever
land they operate in.

~~~
EthanHeilman
What gives the state's law making capacity the magical ability to trump
morality and ethics?

There exist laws so hideous and offensive to human dignity, that they should
never be obeyed.

EDITED: I am not talking about the google privacy case specifically, previous
posts in this thread had widened the scope beyond this point.

~~~
chris_wot
Agreed. If you feel that you cannot obey those laws, you should cease doing
business in that country.

~~~
EthanHeilman
What if that is the sole country you do business in and you are legally
forbidden from closing your business (as can happen to a business that
produces essential war materials)?

The problem that is that companies are not above the law, but they are even
less above ethics. The primary reason that we argue that companies should
follow the law is ethics and when ethics and the law are in conflict ethics
_always_ trumps the law.

~~~
wavefunction
You're running a hypothetical munitions factory whose sole client is the
government and you're worrying about the ethics and morality of having to
comply with the laws of that country?

Let's worry about the morals and ethics of operating that munitions factory
before we get concerned with "unjust" laws.

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p4bl0
Actually, the Conseil d'État just released its decision a few minutes ago:
Google have to pay. See [http://www.conseil-etat.fr/fr/communiques-de-
presse/sanction...](http://www.conseil-etat.fr/fr/communiques-de-
presse/sanction_prononcee_par_cnil_a-l-encontre_google_inc.html) (in French).

~~~
jmnicolas
Le Conseil d'État is a French institution whose decisions can be broken
(sadly) by European courts.

I think Google is not fighting for its reputation, but if they pay now they
will open the door to more fines from over countries.

~~~
p4bl0
> Le Conseil d'État is a French institution whose decisions can be broken
> (sadly) by European courts.

It's not as simple as that. From what I have understood, there is a precise
hierarchy of courts and the Conseil d'État is at the top of the administrative
courts hierarchy. The only way to appeal their decision is to go one step
higher which would be the European Court of Human Rights, and I don't see how
Google could find a valid reason to get there with this issue.

~~~
masklinn
With piles of money involved it's possible that the ECHR would find for a
reduction of citizen's rights, but AFAIK that'd be a first. Usually they go
the other way around, and pretty seriously so.

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renekooi
> accepting the fine would have also involved making a public admission of
> guilt (...) and the company feels this would have "irreparably damaged" its
> reputation.

It probably would've. But if they don't want that loss of reputation, perhaps
they should have followed the appropriate laws in the first place? Seems like
this is kind of the point of a punishment.

~~~
skj
I think the feeling is that the "appropriate" laws were not, in fact,
appropriate.

~~~
masklinn
Of course Google's feeling is that they should be able to do whatever they
want with user's data and shouldn't have to tell anybody anything, and thus
they believe privacy and data protection regimes are inappropriate.

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throwaway_yy2Di
This is partly about the insane European cookie directive [0] (cf. [1]). A
problem with forced apologies is, when the crimes you're apologizing for are
actually controversial political issues, it takes on the character of
political speech.

"I'm sorry I stole from that guy" is an apology. "I'm sorry I hacked your
computer without your consent, in violation of privacy law" \-- meaning you
set a browser cookie -- that's something else.

[0] " _According to the watchdog, Google didn 't adequately inform users about
its data collection processes, nor did it obtain consent or tell users how
long cookies would be installed on their machine._"

[http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/08/google-privacy-cnil-
fine/](http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/08/google-privacy-cnil-fine/)

[1]
[https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=eu+cookie&sort...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=eu+cookie&sortby=points+desc&start=0)

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yawz
_> ...its sorrows in a bottle of beaujolais..._

You'll have more sorrows after drinking some Beaujolais. It's incredible that
this is one of the best known wine regions in France. At most barely-
drinkable, Beaujolais is inferior to most French wine.

~~~
wavefunction
What would you recommend? I don't drink a lot of wine so I tend to just buy
$14ish bottles of American Pinot Noir or Reislings.

~~~
masklinn
Bordeaux and Bourgogne (Burgundy) are the big ones[0]. Loire and Alsace are
also known for more specific wine types.

That doesn't necessarily help much as within each regions exist complex
classification systems (e.g. Bordeaux uses _Châteaux_ , essentially
winemakers, while Burgundy uses an m:n mapping of _domaines_ (a winemaker) to
_terroir_ (a geographical area), there's quite a bit of variation across
winemakers (and within one especially on generational shifts) and price is
essentially useless a data point. And _then_ you've got to decide whether you
want "drink" wine drunk within a few years or "keep" wine which you'll grow
over 5, 10, 20 years or more.

[0] Bordeaux is bigger, Bourgogne has more controlled designations of origin.

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bowlofpetunias
This isn't company versus country. We're not talking about some arbitrary
bureaucratic regulation.

This is corporation versus civil rights in a free and democratic Western
nation.

This is a level of greed driven arrogance that makes 90's Microsoft look like
saints.

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wildpeaks
Compared to the amount they owe from tax evasion (the 1 billion € mentioned in
the thread), 150k is almost a drop in the bucket.

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free652
Let's just wait for the time when US will sue a number of french companies for
some sort of privacy violations and force french to drop their lawsuit against
Google.

