Those should only apply to users accessing from those nations
It is a complex issue for a global company for sure, but I do not want the internet to be censored down to the lowest common denominator of Government regulations.
A Person in nation X should not have to be censored under the laws of nation Y
>As a good faith question - if you were an American, how would you create a site or service for a domestic audience without insulting the rest of the world?
First I would say that I don't think I've been, or particularly seen others, be offended by sites that are clearly targeted at a US/North American audience while still being more widely accessible. Usually I am happy that being an English speaker gets me access to a wider set of things on the internet than would otherwise be specifically targeted for where I live. I'd say this is fairly true up until the scale of a company with international presence and operations.
Yes there is going to be some vocal minority who behave in an entitled manner and loudly complain that something didn't meet their personal expectations, but this is a small minority and not representative of the wider English-using-international audience.
If a site is open and upfront about what they are doing then I wouldn't have any issue. Examples might be using geolocation to restrict access or just having some note making clear that 'this service is for X, use it elsewhere at your own risk'.
A good example of this is the range of approaches different sites have taken to GDPR compliance (or that awful cookie law compliance!) following its implementation by the EU and the non-EU countries that have adopted it.
Some non-EU sites (possibly based in the US but also plenty of others elsewhere) have used geolocation to restrict access from the EU, others have implemented those consent banners, others have done nothing. However I don't think it is reasonable to blame a company doing any of these, ultimately we are benefitting from the protections the new law provides - if we don't like the wider implications of that then we need to take that up with our lawmakers, not a foreign company located somewhere with their own set of data protection laws.
The change for me occurs when a company is an international entity. I realise this is a bit of a grey line as to what defines this, but hopefully we'd all agree that FAANG meets this definition. When you're actively engaged with international markets and generating significant revenue in countries around the world I think it is a reasonable expectation that you either: a) make services culturally and linguistically localised; or b) more carefully target a service to some specific regions.
TLDR - at a small scale, if you are open & clear about your intentions I don't think you need to worry about 'insulting the rest of the world' - if you get significant traction in another country you should probably open a dialogue with that user base to understand their views.
> The companies are strong proponents of open internet policies and free speech but are now being asked to be agents for governments that censor its citizens.
What does requiring foreign companies to store data of a country's own citizens within its borders == censoring citizens?
> International websites have to respect local laws.
No way.
If I, a US citizen, publish a website hosted in the US that is critical of the Turkish president, should a Turkish court be able to compel me to take it down or block access from Turkey?
What if I'm Israeli and I publish open source software, source and binary hosted in Israel, that is against US hacking laws. Should a US court be able to order an Israeli to stop doing something that is legal in Israel?
(Both of these are hypothetical, I don't know if there are such laws.)
If I have no business in a country (or pseudo country like EU) they should have no jurisdiction over me. I shouldn't have to comply with every crazy authoritarian, free speech suppressing, restricted use country in the world.
If countries want to prosecute their own citizens for visiting my site, consuming my content, or using my software, that is their business.
Now if I do business in that country... that is different, then they might have some legal jurisdiction over me.
> If said company only does business in Canada i see no reason for them to be accountable to the US, Germany or China.
So, to be clear, you are explicitly arguing for the case where the internet should be siloed on a country-by-country basis unless participants are willing and able to establish a legal business presence in every country they’re accessible from? That’s what “doing business” means on the internet.
> Why should foreign companies be entitled to enter a country and break said countries laws?
Sending packets over the internet isn’t “entering a country”.
>If I run, say, a porn site, hosted in the US, as a US company, is it my responsibility to prevent users in a country where pornography is illegal from using my sit
Actually you have in most cases as trade agreements and various treaties usually provide the framework to extend laws and regulations between countries.
Gambling sites for example wether they are run from the UK, Malta or CAR explicitly block US users due to US laws which prevent online gambling.
If you are running a gambling site even in some 3rd world non extradition country if you do not respect the UIGEA you'll be sanctioned and an arrest warrant will be issued faster than you can say poker stars.
> That does create a dilemma for a country that wants to prevent its citizens from accessing content hosted by a company without a presence there. Their only real option is a great firewall of X.
Which is fine. If I have no business relationship with anyone in country X, if I am not present in country X, I do not intend to ever travel to country X, and I am not hosting my stuff in country X, I don't give two figs about their laws.
They are free to block me if they want, with whatever mechanism (fine-tuned, or crude) they want - but I'm not responsible for my http server responding to GET and POST requests from their country (Unless my country has embargoed them), just like an author is not responsible for a citizen of X reading their books (That are banned in X.)
> Im wondering when will countries start preventing US tech platforms from enforcing US laws and US morals on the people of those countries.
This makes zero sense. How do you force anyone to not follow a law? Do you, say, force anyone to post nude pics just because a jurisdiction does not allow anyone to post them? How would that even work?
> Are countries (and their citizens) only permitted to be connected to the internet if their culture matches that of your country/federation?
Don't be so easily offended. Nobody said anything about their culture. The reason the question is being raised is because of the unignorable number of DDOS attacks being launched from their Internet space. Stop that, and you'll have less calls for cutting their connection.
> I am interested in how could this be enforced worldwide?
It's an order against Google. To the extent Google relies on ability to do business in Canada, it can be enforced against Google. Talking about enforcing it against anyone else is irrelevant, since it doesn't apply to anyone else.
> Also on the other side of things, does it harm me more if a foreign government holds information on me, random Joe, or if my own government holds the same info?
Might be a good question for Kim Dotcom. Regardless of your views on his various business, it hard to explain how the US arresting a non-US citizen outside of the US isn’t a huge and worrying overstep by the US.
Now I probably don’t need to worry about a Kim Dotcom style raid on my home, but I see no reason why I should make it easy for the US to do that if they wanted too.
And regardless of hypothetical harms by the US government. Privacy is my right, and I’ll defend it. Why on earth should I be comfortable with my data being taken by governments around the world that don’t share my world view? (And the US government certainly doesn’t share my world views).
Once again, at least I can hold my government accountable. I notionally understand U.K. law, and the U.K. legal system, and thus what abuses I might be subject too. I see no reason why I should have to learn about US law and the US legal system, just to use the internet from my computer in the U.K.
> What if I refuse to provide visitor logs, is it OK for them to block my site at the border? What about to order a private teleco to block my site?
That depends exclusively on the laws of the country in question, not on the laws of the country the offender is based on. That's what a sovereign state does, it determines its own rules.
> But consider the implications. Firms hosting content from a particular country would be subject to court orders from every country. That would not end well.
They already are if they target users in a given country. Lack of international enforcement just means that they might escape enforcement. See also GDPR, the US case against Mega, a company run by a NZ resident and incorporated in Hongkong IIRC. See also how Twitter blocks certain tweets in certain countries lest they’re blocked completely. Same holds true for Facebook. Google censors certain autocomplete and searches in some countries. They also adhere to the EU “right to be forgotten” regulations - despite being an US company.
> I think this is an untenable position as it would mean that any website, published from any country, hosted on servers in any country, would have to abide by the laws of the world’s 193 countries.
I disagree. The way we're going, the internet will be just like traditional trade. There will be ports and customs to bring things into your country, and if you want to host a site you'd only assume you're hosting it in your country.
It would be the death of the internet (are national internets still the internet? maybe some countries will remain relatively open), but the process began a long time ago.
It is caused by local interests who can control parliaments and courts, it is caused by national security interests and censorship requirements.
The fracturing of the internet. I wouldn't've guessed it would happen when I first logged in to slashdot many years ago, but I don't see it getting stopped.
> Don't you consider a website in German, accessible from Germany, which looks totally legal for most Germans as some kind of legal presence in Germany?
No.
The site is created in some set of locations, and is hosted on servers in some set of locations. If none of those locations is in Germany, Germany has no personal jurisdiction.
(At least under US law, which is what counts when it comes to enforcing judgement against someone in the US.)
Those should only apply to users accessing from those nations
It is a complex issue for a global company for sure, but I do not want the internet to be censored down to the lowest common denominator of Government regulations.
A Person in nation X should not have to be censored under the laws of nation Y
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