X And Canada Fight Over Takedowns And They’re Both Wrong
from the how-global-is-that-internet dept
A Canadian tribunal’s $72,000 fine against X for refusing to globally remove non-consensual intimate images (NCII) exposes a fundamental tension that courts have been dodging for years: When can one country order worldwide content takedowns, and when should platforms comply regardless of legal compulsion?
Unfortunately, almost all the commentary on the case is ignoring those tensions and going for the easy layup of just framing it as “Elon Musk ignoring the law again.” That’s a fun framing, but it’s too easy for this particular case.
It actually presents two distinct questions that are getting dangerously conflated: whether Canada has jurisdiction to demand global removals, and whether X should remove credibly reported NCII as basic platform governance. Getting this distinction right matters—not just for this case, but for the future of cross-border content regulation.
The British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal apparently ordered X and other platforms to remove an intimate image of a woman identified as “TR” back in March. But X chose to geofence the content rather than delete it entirely—blocking Canadian users from seeing it while leaving it accessible to the rest of the world. The tribunal wasn’t having it:
Regehr dismissed that argument, noting X’s position would call into question whether British Columbia’s law overstepped the province’s authority under Canada’s constitution.
“I have no authority to consider constitutional arguments,” he wrote. “The question about X’s compliance is a very simple one. I ordered internet intermediaries, which includes X, to remove the intimate image. X received the order, but it did not remove the intimate image. Instead, it did something less. X did not comply with the protection order.”
This hits on a fundamental tension that’s been brewing in internet law for decades: can one country’s courts order global takedowns, and when should they?
Canada actually has some history here. In the troubling landmark Equustek case, the Supreme Court of Canada made a radical departure from traditional jurisdictional limits, ruling that BC courts could issue worldwide injunctions against Google, requiring global de-indexing of websites. The Court essentially argued that the borderless nature of the internet justifies borderless judicial authority—a breathtaking expansion of territorial jurisdiction that upended decades of international law principles.
But that decision was controversial precisely because of its extraterritorial reach. Google challenged the order in U.S. courts, where judges found it conflicted with U.S. law and principles of international comity. The result? A jurisdictional standoff that highlighted how messy cross-border enforcement gets when courts start issuing global orders.
The jurisdictional issues the Equustek case raised haven’t been resolved—they’ve just been papered over by companies generally complying rather than fighting every single order. But X’s approach here suggests those tensions are far from settled.
This case actually presents two distinct issues that shouldn’t be conflated:
First, the jurisdictional question: Should a Canadian provincial tribunal be able to order a global takedown? X’s argument that it would comply within Canadian jurisdiction but not globally is actually pretty reasonable from a legal standpoint. Countries generally can’t impose their laws extraterritorially, and expecting every platform to comply with the most restrictive jurisdiction’s rules worldwide creates a race to the bottom for global speech.
Second, the trust and safety question: Separate from what Canada can legally compel, there’s the other issue: should X be taking down credibly reported NCII as part of basic platform governance? Here the answer seems pretty obvious—most platforms do remove NCII when properly reported because it’s harmful, often illegal, and violates their terms of service.
The tribunal seemed to dodge the first question entirely, with the judge explicitly saying, “I have no authority to consider constitutional arguments.” But dismissing jurisdictional concerns doesn’t make them go away—it just kicks the can down the road.
X’s geofencing response was legally defensible but ethically questionable. The tribunal’s global order was ethically motivated but legally problematic. Neither approach really serves the interests of victims or the broader internet ecosystem.
What makes this case particularly notable is how rare such jurisdictional standoffs have become. The shift toward comprehensive regulatory frameworks—from the EU’s Digital Services Act to various national online harms bills—has largely eliminated the need for case-by-case civil litigation. Platforms now face systematic compliance requirements rather than ad hoc court orders.
But X’s willingness to fight this particular battle suggests we may be entering a new phase where at least some platforms are more selective about which jurisdictional claims they’ll accept. The question, though, is where this all ends up. And whether or not the idea of a global, not fractured, internet can survive.
Filed Under: canada, elon musk, equustek, global takedowns, jurisdiction, ncii
Companies: x
Comments on “X And Canada Fight Over Takedowns And They’re Both Wrong”
Seems pretty straightforward to me: if Canada wants X to take a certain action or face consequences in Canada for not doing so, then they can. Whether or not Canada should do that depends on whether it is a net good for the world if X takes the demanded action. X has the choice of then taking the action or not doing business in Canada.
Consider a morally incomparable but legally similar question: suppose there is an international company which buys and sells human slaves in countries where doing so is not illegal, and this international company also has some operations in Canada. Is it legally possible for a Canadian court to impose sanctions on the part of that company which operates in Canada? Yes. Is it morally required for a Canadian court to do so? Also yes. In normal parlance we call these economic sanctions, where the parent company doing the slavery outside of Canada is a sanctioned organisation, and the subsidiary within Canada is forbidden from having any economic relationship with it.
My point is not to compare NCII with slavery on a moral scale, but to show that there are examples where countries can and should impose legal consequences for actions which occur entirely outside of their own territory, even if the harms of those actions also fall entirely outside the country’s territory. In this specific case, it’s not clear from the reporting whether the victim is Canadian, but if so then there is an even stronger argument for a Canadian court to intervene.
Re:
Bingo. The discussion on TD gets a bit muddied since the examples are always about speech. By being more or less on the most permissive speech side, you never really have to consider the trade offs. The general principle gets more complicated when the shoe is on the other foot and it’s something you wouldn’t want happening.
That said:
There are cases that are more ambiguous. Generally speaking, I think it’s more Canada should do what is a net good for Canadians. It’s main duty is to the public it serves. There are things that are so heinous global concerns become an issue too though, like slavery. But there are cases that would be a net good to act, but you can kind of let go for the sake of international comity.
E.g., Canada and the U.S. can agree to disagree on something like whether hate speech laws are good for the world or not. The Canadian government can try to minimize hate speech directed towards Canadians, but it probably shouldn’t meddle too much in hate speech between two Americans.
If it were a tinpot dictator instead of a liberal democracy, Leon would have already done it with bells on.
Does one country have jurisdiction over another country (outside of some possible treaty agreements)? Hell, no. Should the subject of some “NCII” content have the right to dictate how and where it gets viewed? Depends on how the content was acquired–legally (no) or illegally (more than likely, yes). Clearly, though, some judges think their jurisdiction includes the entire world.
Missing the legal framework
This isn’t how laws work. Twitter has a legal business presence in Canada. This subjects that company to the laws and courts of Canada. A court in Canada decided on a legal remedy against a company for which it has jurisdiction over.
That’s it. That’s the ballgame. Unless Twitter builds a significant bulwark between Twitter-Canada and Twitter-rest-of-the-world, sufficient that they can tell the Canadian government that Twitter-Canada is a fully-separate entity from Twitter-rest-of-the-world, Twitter just has to eat court orders from Canada or face ever increasing sanctions about it.
When it comes to “jurisdiction”, what matters is:
“Where in the internet is the violation?” is not even part of the question. Maybe that’s what you (and clearly Twitter) want, but that’s just not how laws work.
This works both ways. My company doesn’t have to obey UK OSA because we don’t have any business presence in the UK. We are not subject to their laws. UK residents can still access my business’ websites until the UK goes full China and starts DNS blocking at the border, but they fully do not have jurisdiction over us, even if their citizens started using our websites and, even, giving us money.
And, I don’t know about you, but turning this around to, “Your internet presence subjects you to the laws of every country that can access your website,” is a way more terrifying thought than, “You are subject to the laws of any nation you have a presence in.”
Re: That’s it. That’s the ballgame.
Yeah, and that’s a problem. Mike called it a race to the bottom, and he’s absolutely right,
Re:
Exactly. The international sphere is an anarchy, there is nothing limiting a sovereign nation’s judgments except the questions of can it and should it. Even if it violates the Canadian constitution, Canada can change its constitution!
Wait, what is X? Is that the bot filled right-wing echo chamber?
Jeez, I wish I could be selective about which jurisdictional claims I accept. There’s a Lamborghini showroom down the road that has some pretty sweet rides.
Well, this is an interesting case. I guess it’s not surprising it’s Musk yet again showing the limits of voluntary compliance when it comes to being the world’s biggest asshole.
This sort of case is exactly why I’ve stressed sovereignty in the past. If something is blocked only in Canada, it’s in some sense not blocked at all.
If countries can’t do anything, you open it up to the reverse problem- a race to the bottom (top?) for the least restrictive rules. Which for the U.S. is generally fine, as we’re pretty up there at least for speech (but even we have some restrictions on e.g. defamation etc). You don’t want a race to the bottom for restricting speech, but you also don’t want a race to the bottom for the loosest laws, either.
I think the in between of “country can issue global sanctions, but can’t endorse them globally. if a company doesn’t want to comply, the entire site gets blocked in the country” is a reasonable middle-ground. There’s a reason China/Russia have their Great Firewalls, and don’t get to just dictate things globally. Countries get to protect their citizens, and nobodies sovereignty gets messed with in either direction.
If Twitter wants to keep it’s Canadian users, it complies globally. If not, it’s allowed to choose that, but the site gets blocked in Canada.
Short of some sort of global agreement, or at least a bloc like the EU, not really. The only way you can square things is if countries are willing to give up some amount of sovereignty, and that’s not going to happen in a vacuum.
In terms of the bigger picture dynamics, it’s not all that different from things like extradition treaties. Countries don’t extradite to countries with wildly different views on things like e.g. humane prison conditions. Ultimately, the internet is a part of the world, not something separate and above it all.
Re:
See: Mike and every other smug dickhead crowing about VPN usage spiking in the wake of the UK’s age verification laws.
Pretty sure Mike’s livelihood is predicated on denying this.
Re: Re:
How so?
2 sides of the coin
OTOH I dont like one country making rules for everybody. But otoh I dont like that a corp can tell a country “FO this is the internet so you dont get a say”. As if the internet is its own jurisdiction outside the borders of any law.
Re:
This isn’t “one country making rules for everybody”; it’s one country making rules for companies which operate within that country. If X doesn’t want to follow Canadian law then they can stop doing business in Canada, and then Canadian courts will have no power over them.
Re: Re:
As if X needs an office in Canada. What X has is a dumbass who will walk away from a Canadian office and Canadian employees in a heartbeat.
Maybe Mike is missing a point here, picking the wrong case, but so are you: Canada has already ruled it can project court orders anywhere.
Re: Re: Re:
Whether or not X has an office in Canada, if they are selling subscriptions to customers in Canada then they are doing business in Canada. Canada is a sovereign country so it can enforce its own laws on any company which does business within its jurisdiction. Companies have the choice to do business, accepting jurisdiction, or not do business.
Not Legally Correct
Unfortunately, the author is incorrect on the law here. It is not true that “Countries generally can’t impose their laws extraterritorially.” Countries frequently can and do. See, for example, the Effects Doctrine in the US, which allows the US to apply various laws like antitrust to foreign actions if it has effects in the US. This is really no different – harms felt in Canada so extraterritorial enforcement.
Equustek did not “upend[] decades of international law principles”. It was quite clear that the court was free to fashion extraterritorial injunctions as courts have for decades. There was some question about whether the underlying IP laws on which Equustek based its claim could permit that extraterritorial effect, but that’s different from whether laws can have extraterritorial effect.
The controversy around Equuetek was not whether a court could issue extraterritorial injunctions without violating international law, it was whether it should, in the circumstances, exercise its discretion to do so. Further, in the following case in California where Google successfully received an injunction against enforcement in the US, Judge Davila’s decision expressly did not address comity, contrary to the author’s assertion here.
Can’t wait until China (or Trump) orders Google or whoever to block Canadian government websites. Or something else equally absurd, because that is what Canada and others are bloody well asking for.
Then there’s X. OMFG. Are they doing this just to challenge the overreach? Can’t really credit that idea. But if they want to claim it, X should just tell Canada it refuses the order, but take down the damn offending bits anyway as it is the right thing to do.
Too many idiots, not enough villages.
On the flipside, imagine a country like Canada makes an erroneous takedown notice, should that be applied globally? If they’re sending a lot of them, maybe there are erroneous ones in there?
I’m not saying Elon was right or wrong here. Maybe, he was wrong.
Imagine it was Google, or some other company, which disagreed with a takedown. Under this reasoning, that takedown should apply globally.
There was a similar issue with Australian censor Julie Inman Grant a few years ago. She tried to get Twitter to remove a video of a violent attack globally. In the end, she dropped the order during litigation. That order was simply a line too far.
I agree with you that it can be a bit complicated.
I think it’s important to consider that these are cases which have gotten more publicity. One of those seemingly unsympathetic cases. Companies are likely removing more innocuous content.
Bad Take From a Tribunal
Like several cases that have hit the news over the last decade; this is yet another example of a Canadian Tribunal getting it wrong.
For those in the know, the complainant is a notorious “vexatious litigant” in British Columbia who also happens to be trans. The image in question wouldn’t be considered as NCII by any other court in the country (AI generated image of complainants face on top of a topless obese male figure). The reason the tribunal gave for classifying this image as NCII basically boiled down to “transphobia”.
Musk and X challenged a similar “global” takedown order in Australia last year over a video of an Islamist knife attack on a pastor in Sydney during a livestream. The AU regulator ordered the video be taken down universally. Most platforms did. X blocked the video in Australia but refused to do so globally. An AU judge initially held up the regulator’s global order but reversed his ruling a couple of weeks later. Online free speech advocates backed X. Here is URL to the Arstechnica report – https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/elon-musk-wins-fight-with-australian-safety-regulator-over-stabbing-video-on-x/