6 ms·

Russia, after protests, tells Google not to advertise “illegal” events

108 points by rumcajz 7y ago

rhacker 7y ago
It's just too good - We have blamed Russia for using our platforms to elect someone. Now Russia is telling our platforms to block certain content otherwise they will consider it interference. The Cold War never ended did it?
- dmix 7y ago
  Isn’t it pretty common policy for the US et al to promote pro democracy protests and politicians in other countries? If it did come from state backed information sources I could see some legitimacy to the claim but I doubt that’s the only thing they mean. As always there will be tons of misdirection to hide the sources and overstating of the impact of foreign boogiemen for political points and justification of new information controls. It’s a tactic as old as politics.
  - lazyjones 7y ago
    > Isn’t it pretty common policy for the US et al to promote pro democracy protests and politicians in other countries? No, the US have supported and promoted dozens of coups and dictators. The phrase you're looking for is not "pro democracy", it's "aligned with the US interests".
    - deogeo 7y ago
      These kinds of criticisms can ring rather shallow and generic without examples. So here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
      - natechols 7y ago
        It's still pretty shallow and generic if the cited example occurred when my parents were still small children.
        soulofmischief 7y ago
        How, exactly? One day your children could say the same of political atrocities committed in your youth. Governments outlast people. The infrastructure and incentives which drive it have not changed. America was founded and bred on colonialism and foreign dictatorships which enable cheap cost of living at the expense of hellish working conditions in other countries.
        natechols 7y ago
        If you're going to claim that something is common practice, you should be able to do better than a 65-year-old example. There are certainly many more recent examples of American foreign policy screwups - some of which were vastly more destructive than Iran - but I'm not aware of any during my lifetime that involved overthrowing a democratically elected government.
        soulofmischief 7y ago
        By this logic, governments would never be held accountable for their actions if they simply waited to address them 65 years after the fact.
      - rodorgas 7y ago
        Another examples are dictatorial coups in Latin America supported by USA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- DenisM 7y ago
  It's one thing to offer the wires, it's another to speak over them. If you were meaning to draw an equivalency it's not working out.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    I think it is a naive view to think that the United States doesn't "speak over them."
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  If you want to be a gatekeeper, expect everyone more powerful to force you to do gatekeeping for them.
  - pas 7y ago
    The moment Google adhered to the first Roskomnadzor (or whatthefuck is its name) request they become gatekeepers. After a certain point, simply due to the number of people on your platform, you become someone to be influenced / controlled / watched out for / a target / a friend / an enemy. And other control brokers, large and small, will try to influence you. (And - to a degree - you can't escape it, you will be influenced. Now you have to counter it, embrace it, ignore it, understand it, downplay it, dodge it, amplify it, etc.) Size (of potential influence) makes organizations, platforms, people targets, not "gatekeeping".
- makomk 7y ago
  This was all entirely predictable, of course, but that didn't stop our entire press and most of our politicians from handing this talking point to Russia on a silver platter.
patrickmay 7y ago
> MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s state communications watchdog said on Sunday it had asked Google (GOOGL.O) to stop advertising “illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform. > Tens of thousands of Russians staged what observers called the country’s biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand free elections to Moscow’s city legislature. > The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said Russia would consider it interference in its sovereign affairs and a hostile influence should Google fails to respond to the request. If Google still follows "Don't be evil", it will respond with the equivalent of a middle finger. I hope someone there still thinks Enlightenment values are more important than kowtowing to a repressive government.
- pfundstein 7y ago
  Firstly Google has ditched that slogan, so no use in trying to arbitrarily hold them to it. And secondly, Google has to operate within the law regardless of country.
- throw2016 7y ago
  If youtube was a Russian owned site hosting videos on US protests the US government would accuse it of 'sowing discord' and shut it down without controversy. Now suppose Russia already has a history of meddling in US internal affairs and funding coups within the US, will Russian youtube with videos on US protests be really even allowed to operate here? Would anyone here even be making arguments about democracy, freedom and enlightenment? There is always a kind of dissonance and double standards in these discussions. You can't let the harassment and persecution of whistle blowers like Assange, Snowden, Manning, the protestors at Standing Rock and immigrant activists and other brazen attacks on democracy go unchallenged and then claim to be 'concerned' about democracy in far off Russia or China. That is politics, not concern for values. These values if they are to have any meaning can only apply to actions not actors, and using them to to demonize some and excuse others renders them meaningless, and in many ways this has already happened with the widespread abuse of human rights and democracy by some to achieve other objectives.
dimator 7y ago
How can a protest video be considered illegal in a country that claims to be an open and free democracy? There was a time when I would expect Google to stick to its principles and say no. Nowadays, I'm not so sure.
- r3bl 7y ago
  The answer is so simple it's brilliant: you need a permission from the local police in order to organize a protest on a specific location at a specific time. In most of the cases, that works fine. In a small number of cases when the authorities really don't want you to organize a protest, they'll keep denying you one location after the other using bullshit excuses until the date when the protest is set to happen. Then they can crack it down for "unlawful assembly". Note that I'm not from Russia, but I am from a country that looks up to Russia for some forsaken reason and we have experienced protests getting killed in this fashion.
  - chupasaurus 7y ago
    > you need a permission from the local police in order to organize a protest on a specific location at a specific time. Correction #1: from a town administration, not a police. Correction #2: the actual legal state of a non-permitted demonstration is fuzzy because while the right for it is given by the Constitution, organizers and any violations of "peace and unarmed" way could be penalized due to federal laws which are stated applicable by the same Constitution.
- dan-robertson 7y ago
  Is this a serious question? Even if one ignores the obvious Russia-specific answer, there are plenty of reasons for a protest to be illegal in more western states. Normally it would be illegal to assemble on private land without permission, for example. And there are often laws requiring protests to eg seek permission for a planned route and stick to it (though these may not necessarily be enforced).
  - DenisM 7y ago
nosmokearea 7y ago
Putin have stolen hundreds of billions from regular Russians and almost all authorities are corrupted now. It's time to stop this mentally sick guy.
evmar 7y ago
I find it interesting on HN how inevitably the commenters reach for "Google should disobey the law here" in stories like these. As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? And then simultaneously when it comes to privacy laws (GPDR etc.) we also clutch our pearls about how these companies aren't doing enough! Don't get me wrong: clearly unjust laws exist and there exist situations where resistance is the moral thing to do. I just find it terrifying how quickly people jump to saying it'd be appropriate for obscenely powerful companies like Google to make up their own legal system and pick and choose which laws apply to them. (Disclaimer: Google employee / American citizen, find both orgs frightening)
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  > As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? They decide that for themselves already and are fined routinely for this.
- fwdpropaganda 7y ago
  It's very obvious why: HN hates Russia/Russians. Go on the Telegram thread right now and check out how many people say they don't trust Telegram because the founders are Russian. Regarding Facebook in the US, HNer say they should have consequences for doing something completely legal, selling advertising. Google in Russia, HNers say Google should disobey the law. People pretend to be principled, but really they just want to push their worldview on others.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  It only looks like that when you view it one-dimensionally. In truth, there is a kind of Grand Unified Law, of which we are still working out the details, which we (whether we realize it or not) want companies to follow. It is law based on ethics and morality, and no legal infrastructure in any country today is entirely accommodating of this law. The fact is that we live in a world full of corrupt politics, and most of the time when companies have to "play ball" with requests such as censorship, it's a bad thing. We are working on the GUL but we do know that it includes freedom of speech. This is very separate from things like regulations and safety measures, which are obviously in place for a reason and which would also exist in this hypothetical GUL. You simply cannot break it down as "sometimes you want them to follow the law and sometimes you don't", because the law is imperfect and does not currently reflect the best case scenario. I would resist censorship in another country and I expect Google, et al. to do the same on the basis of putting ethics before money.
sorokod 7y ago
Any one can provide a sample link to "“illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform* ?
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIlgTCVInOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIlgTCVInOE
nosmokearea 7y ago
Putin needs mass censorship and he is planning to completely ban YouTube in Russia, because a lot of his corruption schemas were published from Navalniy's anti-corruption agency on YouTube and everyone can see it. Without the ban his ranking will be at the bottom till end of the year.
cybice 7y ago
Google can use Russian Constitution: 31. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings and demonstrations, marches and pickets. Article 29 1. Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech. 2. The propaganda or agitation instigating social, racial, national or religious hatred and strife shall not be allowed. The propaganda of social, racial, national, religious or linguistic supremacy shall be banned. 3. No one may be forced to express his views and convictions or to reject them. 4. Everyone shall have the right to freely look for, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information by any legal way. The list of data comprising state secrets shall be determined by a federal law. 5. The freedom of mass communication shall be guaranteed. Censorship shall be banned. PS. Im Russian and live here.
- cybice 7y ago
  And on "illegal" events, the main thing Russian citizen is asking - that government must use our constitution too
- mc32 7y ago
  Similar for the Chinese constitution but that has little meaning in practice.
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  The penalties for involvement in non-permitted assemblies are legal due to article 55.3 of the same Constitution. The same article is used for Internet filtering and other !!fun!! stuff.
- ashleyn 7y ago
  Didn't seem to work very well when Russia banned "gay propaganda." Russian constitution doesn't really seem worth the paper it's printed on and more or less is run by conservative-democratic mobs.
- azangru 7y ago
  There is also federal act number 54-FZ, which says that the local authorities should be notified of the planned event (Article 5, section 4); and if the respective authority does not approve the event then it shall not be held (Article 5, section 5) [1]. This latter norm is criticized for being not entirely constitutional [2]; but it is a part of the present Russian legal framework. Should Google in any way be bound by this federal act? 1- [In Russian] http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?rnd=91E57842AD234D3FF22F8620D46D9ADF&req=doc&base=LAW&n=308824&REFFIELD=134&REFDST=1000000008&REFDOC=107815&REFBASE=LAW&stat=refcode%3D17416%3Bindex%3D11#2ggsw78lw72 http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?rnd=91E57842AD2... 2- https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2012)007-e https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?p...
dredmorbius 7y ago
Oh the irony. Do as I say, not as I do.
shmerl 7y ago
Why should Google listen to what they say? Pull the company from dictatorship regimes, and then ignore their commands.
Nasrudith 7y ago
This highlights one of the undermentioned issues of both international businesses of clashing sets of laws. It is surprising really that this is still done ad-hocly even after many years of international trade and shifting relationships between countries. It is flat out impossible to follow all sets of laws at once. Even in a 'federate it out to one per country that follows its laws' would become rapidly problematic if linkage to the 'main' company. Google couldn't just set up say a Google-Iran following Iranian laws without violating sanctions. I'm not sure if there either a 'good' universal answer or one which is widely liked. The easiest and most controlling would be a radical 'ban international business' - it would make the domains clearer but would be a bad idea. Extraterritorality would be a 'technical' solution but would also come with so many problems it isn't funny makes the previous bad idea look good in comparison.
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  Very good point, but surely this problem is not without precedent? Disputes in international waters come to mind. Maybe there is a need for some kind on international convention governing these matters.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Yeah but they weren't exactly "stable" - they were kinds of incidents which lead to / were used as pretexts for wars. Internet and enforcibility complicate matters further - even if they formalized say a "free to host to everywhere but not to monetize".
ryan_j_naughton 7y ago
> The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said Russia would consider it interference in its sovereign affairs and a hostile influence should Google fails to respond to the request. Given how the Russians are obviously meddling in elections around the world using hacking and disinformation campaigns, I don't think they really have any leg to stand on here. Their acceptance of flagrantly violating laws in other countries means that really the US, through Google, should be trying to meddle inside Russia to advocate for opposition parties and Democratic/civil society institutions. If the West could effectively organize mass anti-Putin protests and scare him, it seems beneficial in a world where his meddling has gone relatively unanswered except for sanctions. Especially if our answer was "we" will focus on disseminating accurate information and supporting free speech, countering both authoritarianism and disinformation campaigns, it would become a brighter line of differing world philosophies and give some moral foundation in its connection to Western liberalism. It would be meddling through its support of individual rights, free expression, freedom to assemble, supporting free elections. It's similar to giving political asylum to persecuted opposition leaders who stand for liberalism and democracy and then amplifying their message from exile. We should enshrine this support of such rights into some NGOs and international treaties (many of which we already have) that Democratic societies could sign and then multinational corporations would have a standard of international law to follow. Then instead of corporations having to choose which laws to follow, they would have more clarity through following international law. And obviously there is a massive slippery slope in everything I just proposed. It's like how the Bretton Woods Conference after WWII established the World Bank and the IMF to push a western global paradigm for how we think economic development, which entrenched a markets based system over a communist system. I think developing some new organizations / treaties that then help align how all these multinationals and Western governments work together in an era of the internet to push for certain rights, would be a net positive, while fraught proposition. Right now massive amounts of power are being consolidated into a handful of internet companies, and that power is being manipulated to sow discord and disinformation to the benefit mostly of authoritarian regimes. We could way more effectively use this power to fight those regimes and begin to play offense instead of only defense.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

108 points by rumcajz 7y ago

It's just too good - We have blamed Russia for using our platforms to elect someone. Now Russia is telling our platforms to block certain content otherwise they will consider it interference. The Cold War never ended did it?

dmix 7y ago
Isn’t it pretty common policy for the US et al to promote pro democracy protests and politicians in other countries? If it did come from state backed information sources I could see some legitimacy to the claim but I doubt that’s the only thing they mean. As always there will be tons of misdirection to hide the sources and overstating of the impact of foreign boogiemen for political points and justification of new information controls. It’s a tactic as old as politics.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > Isn’t it pretty common policy for the US et al to promote pro democracy protests and politicians in other countries? No, the US have supported and promoted dozens of coups and dictators. The phrase you're looking for is not "pro democracy", it's "aligned with the US interests".
  - deogeo 7y ago
    These kinds of criticisms can ring rather shallow and generic without examples. So here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
    - natechols 7y ago
      It's still pretty shallow and generic if the cited example occurred when my parents were still small children.
      - soulofmischief 7y ago
        How, exactly? One day your children could say the same of political atrocities committed in your youth. Governments outlast people. The infrastructure and incentives which drive it have not changed. America was founded and bred on colonialism and foreign dictatorships which enable cheap cost of living at the expense of hellish working conditions in other countries.
        natechols 7y ago
        If you're going to claim that something is common practice, you should be able to do better than a 65-year-old example. There are certainly many more recent examples of American foreign policy screwups - some of which were vastly more destructive than Iran - but I'm not aware of any during my lifetime that involved overthrowing a democratically elected government.
        soulofmischief 7y ago
        By this logic, governments would never be held accountable for their actions if they simply waited to address them 65 years after the fact.
    - rodorgas 7y ago
      Another examples are dictatorial coups in Latin America supported by USA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
DenisM 7y ago
It's one thing to offer the wires, it's another to speak over them. If you were meaning to draw an equivalency it's not working out.
- MiroF 7y ago
  I think it is a naive view to think that the United States doesn't "speak over them."
zzzcpan 7y ago
If you want to be a gatekeeper, expect everyone more powerful to force you to do gatekeeping for them.
- pas 7y ago
  The moment Google adhered to the first Roskomnadzor (or whatthefuck is its name) request they become gatekeepers. After a certain point, simply due to the number of people on your platform, you become someone to be influenced / controlled / watched out for / a target / a friend / an enemy. And other control brokers, large and small, will try to influence you. (And - to a degree - you can't escape it, you will be influenced. Now you have to counter it, embrace it, ignore it, understand it, downplay it, dodge it, amplify it, etc.) Size (of potential influence) makes organizations, platforms, people targets, not "gatekeeping".
makomk 7y ago
This was all entirely predictable, of course, but that didn't stop our entire press and most of our politicians from handing this talking point to Russia on a silver platter.

patrickmay 7y ago

> MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s state communications watchdog said on Sunday it had asked Google (GOOGL.O) to stop advertising “illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform. > Tens of thousands of Russians staged what observers called the country’s biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand free elections to Moscow’s city legislature. > The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said Russia would consider it interference in its sovereign affairs and a hostile influence should Google fails to respond to the request. If Google still follows "Don't be evil", it will respond with the equivalent of a middle finger. I hope someone there still thinks Enlightenment values are more important than kowtowing to a repressive government.

pfundstein 7y ago
Firstly Google has ditched that slogan, so no use in trying to arbitrarily hold them to it. And secondly, Google has to operate within the law regardless of country.
throw2016 7y ago
If youtube was a Russian owned site hosting videos on US protests the US government would accuse it of 'sowing discord' and shut it down without controversy. Now suppose Russia already has a history of meddling in US internal affairs and funding coups within the US, will Russian youtube with videos on US protests be really even allowed to operate here? Would anyone here even be making arguments about democracy, freedom and enlightenment? There is always a kind of dissonance and double standards in these discussions. You can't let the harassment and persecution of whistle blowers like Assange, Snowden, Manning, the protestors at Standing Rock and immigrant activists and other brazen attacks on democracy go unchallenged and then claim to be 'concerned' about democracy in far off Russia or China. That is politics, not concern for values. These values if they are to have any meaning can only apply to actions not actors, and using them to to demonize some and excuse others renders them meaningless, and in many ways this has already happened with the widespread abuse of human rights and democracy by some to achieve other objectives.

dimator 7y ago

How can a protest video be considered illegal in a country that claims to be an open and free democracy? There was a time when I would expect Google to stick to its principles and say no. Nowadays, I'm not so sure.

r3bl 7y ago
The answer is so simple it's brilliant: you need a permission from the local police in order to organize a protest on a specific location at a specific time. In most of the cases, that works fine. In a small number of cases when the authorities really don't want you to organize a protest, they'll keep denying you one location after the other using bullshit excuses until the date when the protest is set to happen. Then they can crack it down for "unlawful assembly". Note that I'm not from Russia, but I am from a country that looks up to Russia for some forsaken reason and we have experienced protests getting killed in this fashion.
- chupasaurus 7y ago
  > you need a permission from the local police in order to organize a protest on a specific location at a specific time. Correction #1: from a town administration, not a police. Correction #2: the actual legal state of a non-permitted demonstration is fuzzy because while the right for it is given by the Constitution, organizers and any violations of "peace and unarmed" way could be penalized due to federal laws which are stated applicable by the same Constitution.
dan-robertson 7y ago
Is this a serious question? Even if one ignores the obvious Russia-specific answer, there are plenty of reasons for a protest to be illegal in more western states. Normally it would be illegal to assemble on private land without permission, for example. And there are often laws requiring protests to eg seek permission for a planned route and stick to it (though these may not necessarily be enforced).
- DenisM 7y ago

nosmokearea 7y ago

Putin have stolen hundreds of billions from regular Russians and almost all authorities are corrupted now. It's time to stop this mentally sick guy.

evmar 7y ago

I find it interesting on HN how inevitably the commenters reach for "Google should disobey the law here" in stories like these. As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? And then simultaneously when it comes to privacy laws (GPDR etc.) we also clutch our pearls about how these companies aren't doing enough! Don't get me wrong: clearly unjust laws exist and there exist situations where resistance is the moral thing to do. I just find it terrifying how quickly people jump to saying it'd be appropriate for obscenely powerful companies like Google to make up their own legal system and pick and choose which laws apply to them. (Disclaimer: Google employee / American citizen, find both orgs frightening)

zzzcpan 7y ago
> As if megacorps weren't terrifying enough, now we expect them to extrajudiciously decide which laws they think are "just" enough to obey or not? They decide that for themselves already and are fined routinely for this.
fwdpropaganda 7y ago
It's very obvious why: HN hates Russia/Russians. Go on the Telegram thread right now and check out how many people say they don't trust Telegram because the founders are Russian. Regarding Facebook in the US, HNer say they should have consequences for doing something completely legal, selling advertising. Google in Russia, HNers say Google should disobey the law. People pretend to be principled, but really they just want to push their worldview on others.
soulofmischief 7y ago
It only looks like that when you view it one-dimensionally. In truth, there is a kind of Grand Unified Law, of which we are still working out the details, which we (whether we realize it or not) want companies to follow. It is law based on ethics and morality, and no legal infrastructure in any country today is entirely accommodating of this law. The fact is that we live in a world full of corrupt politics, and most of the time when companies have to "play ball" with requests such as censorship, it's a bad thing. We are working on the GUL but we do know that it includes freedom of speech. This is very separate from things like regulations and safety measures, which are obviously in place for a reason and which would also exist in this hypothetical GUL. You simply cannot break it down as "sometimes you want them to follow the law and sometimes you don't", because the law is imperfect and does not currently reflect the best case scenario. I would resist censorship in another country and I expect Google, et al. to do the same on the basis of putting ethics before money.

sorokod 7y ago

Any one can provide a sample link to "“illegal mass events” on its YouTube video platform* ?

zzzcpan 7y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIlgTCVInOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIlgTCVInOE

nosmokearea 7y ago

Putin needs mass censorship and he is planning to completely ban YouTube in Russia, because a lot of his corruption schemas were published from Navalniy's anti-corruption agency on YouTube and everyone can see it. Without the ban his ranking will be at the bottom till end of the year.

cybice 7y ago

Google can use Russian Constitution: 31. Citizens of the Russian Federation shall have the right to assemble peacefully, without weapons, hold rallies, meetings and demonstrations, marches and pickets. Article 29 1. Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech. 2. The propaganda or agitation instigating social, racial, national or religious hatred and strife shall not be allowed. The propaganda of social, racial, national, religious or linguistic supremacy shall be banned. 3. No one may be forced to express his views and convictions or to reject them. 4. Everyone shall have the right to freely look for, receive, transmit, produce and distribute information by any legal way. The list of data comprising state secrets shall be determined by a federal law. 5. The freedom of mass communication shall be guaranteed. Censorship shall be banned. PS. Im Russian and live here.

cybice 7y ago
And on "illegal" events, the main thing Russian citizen is asking - that government must use our constitution too
mc32 7y ago
Similar for the Chinese constitution but that has little meaning in practice.
chupasaurus 7y ago
The penalties for involvement in non-permitted assemblies are legal due to article 55.3 of the same Constitution. The same article is used for Internet filtering and other !!fun!! stuff.
ashleyn 7y ago
Didn't seem to work very well when Russia banned "gay propaganda." Russian constitution doesn't really seem worth the paper it's printed on and more or less is run by conservative-democratic mobs.
azangru 7y ago
There is also federal act number 54-FZ, which says that the local authorities should be notified of the planned event (Article 5, section 4); and if the respective authority does not approve the event then it shall not be held (Article 5, section 5) [1]. This latter norm is criticized for being not entirely constitutional [2]; but it is a part of the present Russian legal framework. Should Google in any way be bound by this federal act? 1- [In Russian] http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?rnd=91E57842AD234D3FF22F8620D46D9ADF&req=doc&base=LAW&n=308824&REFFIELD=134&REFDST=1000000008&REFDOC=107815&REFBASE=LAW&stat=refcode%3D17416%3Bindex%3D11#2ggsw78lw72 http://www.consultant.ru/cons/cgi/online.cgi?rnd=91E57842AD2... 2- https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2012)007-e https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?p...

dredmorbius 7y ago

Oh the irony. Do as I say, not as I do.

shmerl 7y ago

Why should Google listen to what they say? Pull the company from dictatorship regimes, and then ignore their commands.

Nasrudith 7y ago

This highlights one of the undermentioned issues of both international businesses of clashing sets of laws. It is surprising really that this is still done ad-hocly even after many years of international trade and shifting relationships between countries. It is flat out impossible to follow all sets of laws at once. Even in a 'federate it out to one per country that follows its laws' would become rapidly problematic if linkage to the 'main' company. Google couldn't just set up say a Google-Iran following Iranian laws without violating sanctions. I'm not sure if there either a 'good' universal answer or one which is widely liked. The easiest and most controlling would be a radical 'ban international business' - it would make the domains clearer but would be a bad idea. Extraterritorality would be a 'technical' solution but would also come with so many problems it isn't funny makes the previous bad idea look good in comparison.

dunkelheit 7y ago
Very good point, but surely this problem is not without precedent? Disputes in international waters come to mind. Maybe there is a need for some kind on international convention governing these matters.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Yeah but they weren't exactly "stable" - they were kinds of incidents which lead to / were used as pretexts for wars. Internet and enforcibility complicate matters further - even if they formalized say a "free to host to everywhere but not to monetize".

ryan_j_naughton 7y ago

> The watchdog, Roscomnadzor, said Russia would consider it interference in its sovereign affairs and a hostile influence should Google fails to respond to the request. Given how the Russians are obviously meddling in elections around the world using hacking and disinformation campaigns, I don't think they really have any leg to stand on here. Their acceptance of flagrantly violating laws in other countries means that really the US, through Google, should be trying to meddle inside Russia to advocate for opposition parties and Democratic/civil society institutions. If the West could effectively organize mass anti-Putin protests and scare him, it seems beneficial in a world where his meddling has gone relatively unanswered except for sanctions. Especially if our answer was "we" will focus on disseminating accurate information and supporting free speech, countering both authoritarianism and disinformation campaigns, it would become a brighter line of differing world philosophies and give some moral foundation in its connection to Western liberalism. It would be meddling through its support of individual rights, free expression, freedom to assemble, supporting free elections. It's similar to giving political asylum to persecuted opposition leaders who stand for liberalism and democracy and then amplifying their message from exile. We should enshrine this support of such rights into some NGOs and international treaties (many of which we already have) that Democratic societies could sign and then multinational corporations would have a standard of international law to follow. Then instead of corporations having to choose which laws to follow, they would have more clarity through following international law. And obviously there is a massive slippery slope in everything I just proposed. It's like how the Bretton Woods Conference after WWII established the World Bank and the IMF to push a western global paradigm for how we think economic development, which entrenched a markets based system over a communist system. I think developing some new organizations / treaties that then help align how all these multinationals and Western governments work together in an era of the internet to push for certain rights, would be a net positive, while fraught proposition. Right now massive amounts of power are being consolidated into a handful of internet companies, and that power is being manipulated to sow discord and disinformation to the benefit mostly of authoritarian regimes. We could way more effectively use this power to fight those regimes and begin to play offense instead of only defense.

deleted 7y ago

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