backbones filtering unsanctioned sites

Fri Feb 17 13:50:47 UTC 2017

* > On Friday, 17 February, 2017 08:29, "Florian Weimer" <fw at deneb.enyo.de> said:
>
>> Of course they do, see the arrest of Augusto Pinochet.
>
> Universal Jurisdiction is supposed to cover the likes of war crimes,
> torture, extrajudicial executions and genocide, that are generally
> agreed to be crimes against humanity as a whole, regardless of where
> they take place.  Much as the copyright cartel would like to put any
> (perceived) loss of revenue into the same bracket, are you *really*
> advocating that copyright infringement belongs in that list?

I think the Spanish prosecutor claimed at the time that crimes were
committed against Spaniards, too.  So it's not quite a case of
absolute universal jurisdiction.  Assuming that Spanish copyright
holders sought the court order, the situation isn't too different.

>> Due to the nature of mass copyright violation, it is likely that these
>> sites violate the rights of Spanish copyright holders, and if such a
>> violated party obtains a court order against an ISP, I see no reason
>> why the violations should go on everywhere except Spain.
>
> The action isn't against the people infringing copyright, the sites
> (arguably) aiding them in infringing copyright, or even the company
> providing hosting services to those sites.  It is, if the situation is
> being reported correctly, forcing a connectivity provider to block
> access to some elements of the hosting services *worldwide* based on
> the fact that it operates in one country.  In my view, both far too
> many steps removed from the offence, and, more importantly,
> overly-broad in impact.

There can be some debate whether a transit ISP should be subject to
such an injunction, rather than a party closer to the source.  But I
don't see why if a Spanish court determines that Spanish law requires
compliance by the ISP, the blocking order should be restricted to
Spain.  The rights are violated everywhere, after all.

Sometimes, global compliance is just a cost of doing business locally.

> Do you think the Chinese government should be able to force any voice
> provider operating in China to block any of their customers, anywhere
> in the world, from talking about Taiwan as an independent country?
>
> Do you think the Iranian government should be able to force any mobile
> phone company operating in Iran to implement a worldwide ban of
> Pokemon Go?
>
> If the answer to either of those questions is "no", can you explain
> why the jurisdiction should be limited in these cases, but not for
> Spanish copyright holders?

Iranian law appears to require permission for running nation-wide
games, not games around the globe.  Similarly, I doubt that Chinese
law has a legal basis for demanding filtering of voice calls, but it's
difficult to find confirmation for that.  (I believe that a lot of
service bans in China are enacted by the government upon encouragement
from would-be competitors, but that does not make such bans legal
according to Chinese law.)

So the difference is that your hypothetical scenarios violate local
laws.