Google Wins Ruling to Block Global Censorship Order (fortune.com) 89
A U.S. judge has partially blocked a recent decision by Canada's Supreme Court that requires Google to delete search results not just in Canada, but in every other country too. From a report: Citing the violation of American laws as well as a threat to speech, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila agreed to grant Google a temporary injunction, which means the company can show the search results in the United States. The search results in question are part of an intellectual property dispute between a Canadian industrial firm called Equustek and a rival company that is reportedly misusing Equustek's trademarks to poach its business. In response, Equustek obtained an injunction in Canada that treated Google as a defendant even though it had no direct relationship with either company. In a controversial decision in June, Canada's highest court agreed by a 7-2 margin to leave the injunction in place.
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The US can't force laws on any other country by any meaning of the word. It's up to other countries what laws they enact. If they don't like the terms of any trade deals, they can just walk away.
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The US can't force laws on any other country by any meaning of the word.
Oh, no . . . ? Tell that to the folks in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . when the US military invades a country . . . US law becomes the norm there . . . even if the natives would prefer Sharia Law.
Hell, even "civilized" countries like New Zealand let themselves be steamrolled by the American legal system: Kim Dotcom. He is definitely no angel, but allowing the American FBI to conduct tactical operation there . . . ? What, like New Zealand doesn't have their own cops . . . ?
It even gets thornier with the US
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even if the natives would prefer Sharia Law.
They only prefer it in countries where big brother puts a hand on their shoulder and squeezes while they answer the question.
There's a reason they're lining up to get the holy hell out of such countries. Now it's fun to imagine the US is the evil in the world, if you are 14 years old and living in mom's basement, or are on the dole from the Russians, but that's not how people stuck in dictatorships feel. You know, those who actually have to live under the rules you do not.
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Oh, no . . . ? Tell that to the folks in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . when the US military invades a country . . . US law becomes the norm there . . . even if the natives would prefer Sharia Law.
No, actually Afghanistan didn't, or at least not in the way the taliban interprets it. The taliban, among other things, forbade things like music, dancing, artwork, and any viewpoints that even slightly strayed from Wahhabism. The majority certainly didn't want this, and furthermore, the US didn't impose its own laws on them. The US deposed the taliban because they were providing safe harbor for terrorists. You're being butthurt over Afghanistan because you think the taliban rule was better means you're jus
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Interesting, so in your mind, South Koreans would be better off if only we had allowed the DPRK to conquer it?
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> If they don't like the terms of any trade deals, they can just walk away.
Japan begs to differ. Ever heard of the Perry expedition? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Whats Good for the Goose (Score:5, Insightful)
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And yet for _thousands_ of years BEFORE Imaginary Property existed people did ALL of those things.
Furthermore, you DO realize that Copyright was invented by publishers [wikipedia.org], right?
You can tell how advanced a Civilization is by how much Free Sharing of Culture they engage in.
--
Capitalism is the disease of greed, not the cure.
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We are also forced to watch FBI warnings on DVDs. Not sure if they are still on Blu Rays (probably)
Re:Whats Good for the Goose (Score:4, Insightful)
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... [www.cbc.ca]
All I see is "Details of the case are subject to a publication ban". How often does that happen in the U.S.? All we know is somebody threw a trailer hitch that killed somebody. Which begs the question what else are they doing?
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Copyright is a different issue, and I'll explain why. I'm in the United States and I've seen content on YouTube that's been blocked on copyright grounds by companies in Canada, the UK, and Australia. The DMCA can't directly be enforced in any of those countries, nor can their copyright laws be directly enforced in the US. Instead, those countries have agreed to international treaties to respect the copyright laws of other countries. In your case, Canada has ratified treaties agreeing to respect US copyr
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Because the US doesn't ask any other countries to do this. Google is based out of the US, so it is beholden to US laws, which for better or for worse (worse in this case, IMO) Google has to comply with the DMCA. Notice other search engines not based in the US don't do this (Yandex, for example.)
However, any tech company with a presence in another country can be asked by that country to apply rules in other countries, which is what Canada is doing (France and a number of its fellow neo-fascist states in Euro
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It certainly does.
US Court cannot overturn Canadian decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Directly from the article:
"It’s unclear, however, what exactly what will happen now since Google, if it restores the search results in the United States, could be acting in contempt of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision. Currently, there are over 300 search results Google has had to suppress."
While the original Canadian decision seems like overreach, the US result doesn't really sheild Google if they restore the results in the US. In some sense it is an overreach too.
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The United States has banned expansion of the Old World into the New World going on two hundred years now. Canada, a tiny New World country, is a beneficiary of this.
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How is the US court ruling an overreach here? As I understand it, Google Canada Corporation is a subsidiary of Google LLC. Google Canada is a Canadian company and is most certainly subject to Canadian law. Google LLC owns Google Canada and many other subsidiaries, but Google LLC is based in the US and conducting business in the US. At issue here is that the Canadian court is trying to force Google LLC and all of Google LLC's other subsidiaries around the world to abide by the Canadian court ruling. The
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The American court is simply stating that Google LLC's operations in the US are not subject to Canadian law
But the American court has absolutely no say on what is subject to the Canadian laws. The ultimate body that has any say over what Canadian law applies to is the Canadian Supreme Court, and in this case they already made a ruling. It might be the "wrong" ruling, but almost by definition it is legally "right" in the context of Canadian law.
Sure, when a national court does something stupid or foolish or whatever, there are lots of pundits who say "they can't do that!", but one country's courts can't really ov
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That was a good condensation of man of the issues. Thanks.
But a treaty that would violate the Constitution would not be a valid treaty.
Of course that makes sense, but some have argued that the “Supremacy Clause” gives treaties supreme authority. Fortunately for sanity, that is mostly garbage. See for example
http://tenthamendmentcenter.co... [tenthamendmentcenter.com]
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That was a good condensation of man of the issues. Thanks.
"Many" is what I meant, man.
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Google US admitted it does business in Canada, so it can't say it's the Canadian branch's problem. The branch is a wholly owned subsidiary in any case, so they lose even if they try to say "Blame (our branch in) Canada".
It's hard to make a multinational look like a collection of national companies: the courts look at reality and say "tell it to the judge" (sarcastically (;-))
Re:US Court cannot overturn Canadian decision (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding is that in their ruling, the Canadian Supreme Court basically pointed out that while it was possible that their decision would violate laws in other countries, nobody hadn't presented any arguments or evidence to that effect.
In other words, they specifically left it open as an "out" for Google: prove that the ruling violated US law and they'd be able to walk it back.
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My understanding is that in their ruling, the Canadian Supreme Court basically pointed out that while it was possible that their decision would violate laws in other countries, nobody hadn't presented any arguments or evidence to that effect.
In other words, they specifically left it open as an "out" for Google: prove that the ruling violated US law and they'd be able to walk it back.
I had not seen that. The Fortune article that is linked through the last Slashdot discussion doesn't mention that in my reading. I would be interested in a reference if you have one.
http://fortune.com/2017/06/28/... [fortune.com]
I did notice this, which doesn't seem too unreasonable:
“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
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It's right there in the decision itself [canlii.org]...
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It's right there in the decision itself [canlii.org]...
Granted, IANAL, but I can't really see any other interpretation than "get a decision from another country saying this is a problem and get back to us".
Thanks, that is informative. Does the US decision indicate that following the ban would "require it [Google] to violate the laws of another jurisdiction"? The US law that is cited in the article (the First Amendment as well as "Section 230") do not "require" Google to publish things, so it could be argued that following the ban doesn't violate those laws in the US, even if imposing the ban does.
That is probably a silly reading of the Canadian decision - even [47] references the idea of the order being "lega
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I haven't actually read more than a quick summary of the US decision, so I really can't speak to the details and how/if the court tries to align it with the Canadian decision.
I'm mainly just pointing out that this new ruling was a logical and expected outcome rather than some sort of brutal US court smackdown that the press seems to have spun it.
Uh, US can't override Canadian law (Score:1)
A US court can't override an order by the Canadian Supreme Court. If Google doesn't comply with the Canadian order, they're in violation of Canadian law, regardless of what the US says.
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They are trying to get Google, in the US, to comply with a Canadian law. The US court is saying, no you don't have to.
Yes, we got that. But the Canadian court ruling stands. To the extent that the Canadian Courts could enforce it before (e.g. by seizing Google owned assets in Canada), they still can. To the extent that they couldn't enforce it before (e.g. by seizing assets outside of their jurisdiction), they still can't. Nothing is changed by the US ruling. The statement that the Canadian ruling has been 'blocked' is simply wrong.
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note that the us ruling only stipulates that Google doesn't have to block those search results in the US, Google still has to block them in Canada regardless of the decision by the US courts.
The problem is not the origin of Google, but the overreach of the Canadian courts. The Canadian courts are completely in their right to ask Google to block the search results in Canada, but to tell them to block those results in other nations is an excessive overstep in their jurisdiction. That being said, the Canadian
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For example, if you're in the EU or somewhere and you login to google.ca they can make sure those search results don't show up.
And if they don't, google in Canada will be penalized.
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I beg to differ. The Canadian government cannot override our bill of rights concerning free speech.
Our constitution overrides treaty obligations [sweetliberty.org] which might obligate U.S. citizens to follow an external judgement which violates the bill of rights.
If that was not the case, you'd have every banana republic forcing judgements on anyone in the U.S. they didn't like for any happenstance reason.
Furthermore, this is one of the primary reasons we have a military that is larger than any to make sure that it remains
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The right to swing your Canadian fist ends at the US' nose.
A Canadian court overreaching??!?! (Score:3, Funny)
I bet they apologized first, though.
This confuses me (Score:2)
If Gucci won a court injunction against a knockoff maker of handbags, then Google could still index the knockoff makers results, even though it harmed Gucci - because 'free speech'?
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Free speech doesn't give a company carte blanche about what information they can post on their website. Child pornography is one example of content that is illegal just about everywhere. The problem arises entirely because different countries have different laws and the internet is globally acces
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Just comply with the injunction (Score:2)
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Wait a minute. Would leaving Equustek out of searches hurt Equustek? Or would it just stop helping Equustek? (I mean from a court/law point of view. Obviously dealing with advertisers might be trickier.)
Google provides a free service. They don't have to keep providing it, do they? The fact that someone else's service can't be relied upon, i
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How is that contempt of court if they unlist both the quarreling parties?
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Equustek did sue the proper defendant, who fled the country and is doing business (apparently in France). Google initially asked for the suit to be filed and agreed the take down links to the other company's sites, and agreement which the courts understood to be worldwide Google then remove the links in Canada, and not France. The court isued a temporary restraining order to get Google to take the sites down until Equustek and/or interpol could find the crooks and have the local French courts enforce the
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s/and agreement/an agreement/
Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
...The idea that an American judge can block the ruling of a Canadian court in the context of the global actions of a company is no sillier than the idea that Canadian court coins have any jurisdiction on what happens outside their borders.
Face it, the legal structures have a long way to go before they've internalized the modern internet.
US rulings have no impact on Canadian law (Score:1)
That judge can't do a darned thing.
Comply or leave. Those are your options.
If Google pisses off the Canadians ... (Score:2)
they can forbid Google to take data gathered in Canada out of the country; maybe unless it has explicit consent of everyone who is referred to in the data. That sort of thing would cause Google (or any similar organisation) a lot of problems.
Imagine a court in Moslem country tries this (Score:2)
Under some strict Moslem sects, it's illegal for a woman to expose anything more than her eyes through the slit at the top of her burka. Now imagine if a Moslem country's court issues a worldwide injunction against all video or still images of women not wearing burkas. Female news anchors on every US TV network from Fox to MSNBC would be affected.
images.google.com would be affected. Newspapers couldn't publish photos of "Women's March Against Trump". Female political candidates wouldn't be allowed to post p
Duh (Score:2)
Should've been obvious from start.