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| Chilling Effects Clearinghouse > International > Weather Reports > Chilling Effects Internationally | Location: https://www.chillingeffects.org/international/weather.cgi?WeatherID=509 |
Wendy Seltzer, Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, July 24, 2005
Abstract: You may have noticed that Chilling Effects has recently begun posting international C&Ds: complaints from people outside the United States to U.S. individuals or companies raising arguments under non-U.S. law. These C&Ds raise some distinct issues from U.S.-based complaints, including jurisdiction, substantive law, and language. They also raise similar issues of transparency for the web hosts and search engines who receive them. Chilling Effects has begun to receive these international complaints from Google, which at times removes results from Google localized searches (e.g., searches on google.fr or google.de instead of google.com).
You may have noticed that Chilling Effects has recently begun posting international C&Ds: complaints from people outside the United States to U.S. individuals or companies raising arguments under non-U.S. law. These C&Ds raise some distinct issues from U.S.-based complaints, including jurisdiction, substantive law, and language. They also raise similar issues of transparency for the web hosts and search engines who receive them. Chilling Effects has begun to receive these international complaints from Google, which at times removes results from Google localized searches (e.g., searches on google.fr or google.de instead of google.com). This URL, http://www.google.com/webhp, should go to the U.S.-version Google search from any IP address.
Because part of our mission is to help the public understand the factors that can contribute to the unavailability or inaccessibility of online information, we have been posting the international notices we receive. At the same time, because the Chilling Effects team consists of U.S. lawyers, faculty, and law students, we do not yet offer annotations to the notices asserting non-U.S. law.
A few general notes: As with the U.S. C&Ds, Chilling Effects posting does not imply a judgment about the notice's legal validity, applicability, or indicate whether the notice was acted upon.
The varying substantive law of different countries means postings legal in one country might be unlawful in another. For example, French law outlaws public exhibition of Nazi symbols; U.S. law would protect that speech under the First Amendment. Jurisdiction, where and under what laws a person can be sued, matters too. Just because a website is accessible anywhere doesn't mean its proprietor can be sued anywhere. A U.S. company with no assets or business contacts abroad doesn't generally need to worry about non-U.S. law. Jurisdiction questions get murkier when a company has contacts or assets abroad -- Yahoo! sued a French group who had won an order from a French prohibiting Yahoo! from allowing French citizens access to Nazi memorabilia, (Yahoo v. LICRA). That case is still pending for en banc review in the 9th Circuit.
If you too want to contribute to the transparency of notice-and-takedown procedures around the world, please submit your C&Ds to Chilling Effects. If you are a lawyer or legal academic ouside the U.S. who would like to participate in the Clearinghouse project, please let us know.
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