Posted by intunderflow 1 day ago
Here is an article from India with some of the story
contra mundum court orders aren't new however, the Brits like to issue them with varying levels of success.
But I guess that it was maybe more convenient for the wikimedia foundation to do it like that instead of doing geofencing that they might not have?
Anyway, the fundamental issue here is that domestic rulings often have international consequences. As a sovereign state, India obviously has the right to ban the Wikimedia Foundation, or any other foreign entity, from doing business within the county. That right is an essential aspect of sovereignty. If they don't like you, they can ban you. But if the Wikimedia Foundation values access to India more than their right to host a particular article, they may choose to comply with the demands of an Indian court, even in matters where the court does not have jurisdiction. And that compliance would technically be voluntary.
I don’t think that’s obvious at all. In the US, constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly, etc apply regardless of nationality or citizenship status.
I guess ultimately this comes down to whether you believe a government and the rights it enforces is legitimate because it has the biggest guns, or because that government was decided by the people, or the legitimacy is determined by the ethics of the government etc
I fundamentally disagree. The Indian State exists to serve its citizens, which are benefitted unambiguous by a free and unconstrained source like Wikipedia. The sovereignty of any state is subject to the benefit of its citizens, not the other way around.
That doesn't mean they won't try anyway, but let us not confuse what is technically or politically feasible with what is moral.
And note how I included "people living in India" here. Legitimacy is a fuzzy concept. Citizenship is a legal category, and it should not matter for legitimacy as such. But it is widely accepted that citizens living outside their country still have a legitimate standing in the matters of the country. But beyond that, a legitimate government should serve the interests of the people factually living within the country. India does not have a large non-citizen population, and the distinction is mostly irrelevant with them. But some other countries do. If their governments only serve the interests of their citizens, they are fundamentally illegitimate.
I'm skeptical that a government already exercising authoritarianism would give ear to the will of the people.
Unlike the US, courts from India likely have limited power to affect Wikipedia operations outside of India. However, they can potentially send people to arrest anyone associated with the Wikimedia Foundation within India, and potentially keep them in jail until Wikimedia complies. (They can also have Wikipedia and donations flowing to the foundation blocked in a country representing something like 1/6th of the global population.)
Edit to add: Wikimedia on the other hand, has the power to block the article, then lean back with a giant bucket of popcorn knowing that it will achieve the exact opposite of what the court wanted to achieve.
That's a common myth. The GDPR doesn't follow citizenship, even if a lot of unofficial guidance wrongly says that.
US-based businesses that aren't branches of companies established in the EU, not targeting people in the EU, and not profiling or otherwise monitoring the behavior of people in the EU are not subject to the GDPR. And "in the EU" cares about where the person's body is, not who issued their passport.
This European Commission summary of GDPR's Article 3 (Territorial scope) is informative:
https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/r...
Here is Article 3 itself: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-3-gdpr/ (unofficial site but generally accurate)
And guidelines (PDF) about Article 3 from the European Data Protection Board: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/sites/default/files/files/file1/e...
However, your scenario may fall in-scope of the GDPR for a simple reason: the Meta Terms of Service specify that the data controller for users (and non-users) living in the EU is Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, which is a company established in the EU. When the data processor or controller activities are through a company or branch established in the EU, the GDPR applies no matter where in the world the person and the data are.
Many states have a wide variety of provisions applying national law in ways that might be contrary to all kinds of naive assumptions about how their jurisdiction should be limited
Jurisdiction is like good manners, there is plenty of those, but it is not some kind of fundamental law of nature.
A few days ago Linux removed all Russian maintainers to follow US laws. Has the Linux Foundation abandoned all principles? Should they have fought the US government?
All? No, but certainly some.
> Should they have fought the US government?
Yes
In practice you can't fight everyone all at once. On the net it may be better to compromise on some to defend others you cherish more.
… and Finland is on the same side as US anyway, might have similar views.
Btw. Did Linux ban all Russian speaking people or Russian citizen or people with Russian IP addresses?
- fine(s)
- arrest(s)
- asset confiscation
If WMF has no physical presence in Russia - there is no way to enforce this ruling and can be "ignored".
You will notice they only order US companies to do so.
ASML, however, abides by U.S. export control regulations because that was a requirement for the approval of the acquisition of SVG.
Everything flows from there.
Another example was US sanctions against Russia, which led to the Linux kernel maintainers removing Russians. Not all Russians support or endorse the war criminal Putin. Are we going to see Western-allied countries like Apartheid Israel also sanctioned? Probably not. Legislation should not be used as a weapon to promote state propaganda.
Are we really going to block freely-available content on the internet? It seems like decentralisation is key to citizen liberty divorced from any one country's legislation.