As Mike points out, this was destined to hit the national courts. It needs an international one, IMHO. That is scary and interesting all at once. We *are* in “legal geek” uncharted territory.

And, here will come “National Security” vs “Free Speech” all those other competing poles. Or, “what jurisdiction should such a court be bound by?”.

Fascinating times ahead. Hats off TechDirt for getting this report to us!

Enjoy.

There are several steps I’m visualising right now that could happen in the future:

– Canada claims actions taken in the U.S. break Canadian counterfeit laws.

– Canada then claims that even although the action happened outside Canada’s borders, it is still permissible to prosecute Google because Google ARE within Canadian borders. I.e. even although Canada’s democratic laws only hold within Canada, it still means anyone in Canada can be subject to them, hence you can still hold folk in Canada accountable to Canadian law without infringing the sovereignty of another country such as the U.S.

– So… the logical next step for Google is for them not to have any of their employees step foot in Canada. And use as many proxies as they need to keep business going there, such as shell companies and literal proxy servers.

– Canada still claims a Canadian law has been broken by Google, and the only method left to get anyone prosecuted is to send an extradition request to the U.S. to request they deport Google employees to Canada for prosecution.

– Now the issue falls to how both countries agree on extradition treaties (and treaties in general). If it signs a treaty with respect to counterfeit items, both democracies have consent, hence it is now morally acceptable on a treaty/extradition level. However the democratic consent of both nations is required. This is why we can quite rightly shun and laugh at requests from North Korea to send over all critics of the regime within the U.S.

– Though the U.S. would have to decide if the First Amendment survives its confrontation with what Canada and other countries demand in such treaties in cases of free expression, such as hate speech and prior restraint. As the U.S. is unlikely to compromise on the First Amendment we can assume it will be the standard.

– Some may say the U.S.’s First Amendment is actually infringing the sovereignty of <i>Canada</i> at this point as there’s no way to enforce Canada’s speech provisions. Not true. The other option left would be to get Canada’s ISPs to “stop at the border” any unacceptable internet speech “traffic”, hence each country correctly has dominion over their turf. No different to customs checks at the border, in fact. But there’s a big problem.

– Anyone who’s been at an airport knows how long customs checks can take, so try to visualise every packet, every decryption, every stenographic hiding, every coded message of any kind never mind plain message, <i>for every ISP that connects to anything outside of Canada, as even if you were to block all U.S. connections, you can use a third-country to proxy round it</i>. It would be like putting a huge border wall across all of Canada’s internet cables as they leave Canadian territory. And every single solitary bit out of the petabytes that is “traded” every day across Canada would have to be vetted. By HUMANS, as we all know as even the most automated deep packet inspectors can’t see encrypted traffic. Such a wall would have to make Trump’s Mexican border wall look like a row of rice-grains.

– There is no way this is going to happen without THE most isolationist Canada-first approach that is willing to risk Canada’s economy with the rest of the world just for the sake of enforcing its CAN (Canadian Area Network) and in turn becoming fully independent generating all its resources from within. Only then can you enforce your sub-section of your speech laws.

– So to conclude, it’s interesting to remember how borderless our world is compared to centuries ago. The isolationists of the world such as Trump and Brexiteers still haven’t seen how their world is quite gone yet.

– Copyright believers will of course still insist that a border wall can be enforced around every digital copy of their work across the planet. No sane person can possibly say copyright law deserves credit for any money an artist now makes in this age.

If Canada wants to block something, great, But their laws don’t cross their own boarders into other countries own rights. Can you imagine what would happen if Russia and China, and Turkey, and Iran and other country’s also wanted world wide block on content their own court rules to block world wide?

Sorry Canada, You don’t own the WORLD!!! You sure as hell don’t own the world wide internet. The dumb judge can throw out whatever he likes and the rest of the world is free to ignore it as the judge has zero authority over the rest of the world.

Hey Canada, why not just be China and have the Great Firewall of Canada. That’s about the best you’re going to be able to do.