I suspect until there's a meaningful way for business executives to be extradited for violating another country's consumer protection laws, there will not be an adequate way to penalize corporations for international misconduct.
Functionally, a company's max losses for violating a country's laws is loss of assets and business in that country, is it not? For an international corporation, very few countries have the ability to hold them to any sort of meaningful penalty, especially when a company like Google can simply withhold service to that country until the country begs them to restore it. (See Google News in Spain.)
I find the current case involving Google in Canada interesting: After losing a right to be forgotten case in the Canadian Supreme Court, the highest law of that jurisdiction... Google filed (and 'won') a case in the Northern District of California to injunct it's ruling. ...I don't know about you, but I don't believe a US court can invalidate the Canadian Supreme Court's order... so doesn't that just put Google in contempt of court in Canada?
IANAL but Canada's supreme court should have jurisdiction only over Canada. It wanted to force Google to remove search results globally and not just from Canadian website. Which authority grants them such powers? I think Google just exposed their bluff by challenging that order in another sovereign jurisdiction.
As a sovereign nation, Canada can impose any restrictions or requirements on a business that exists in their country. (Google has three offices physically in Canada.) Presumably, Canada can pass any law or issue a judgement in keeping with their laws on how to punish an entity in it's borders for noncompliance with their commands.
Those restrictions or requirements need not be limited to their borders. (For instance, the US prohibits companies from doing business with certain entities or persons in foreign countries. That continues to be true even if the person is not inside US borders.)
So, insofar as Google, as a company that does business in Canada, has refused to obey Canadian law, I suspect that Canada would be entirely in keeping with the law to charge Google with any civil or criminal penalties for refusal to comply. A US court's ruling has no authority or interest in the matter of Canada telling a company in Canada what to do.
I presume the end cap of Canada's powers (similarly to any sovereign nation) would be the seizure of all assets and closure of any business in Canada proper. Of course, within the grounds of whatever Canada's own laws allow. So while Canada may not have the sovereign right to force a company operating in another country to comply, it could presumably shut down all of Google's Canadian offices, ban them from doing business with the country, and any other penalty they feel like inside the country.
If you want to do business in a country, you must follow that country's laws, even if you think it's unfair the country is imposing them. This is why Google decided to leave China.
> I suspect until there's a meaningful way for business executives to be extradited for violating another country's consumer protection laws
Why should executives, who are with Google USA, be extradited if they are not breaking any law in the USA? Whatever Canada wants to do should be confined to Canadian borders (so I agree with your current comment that only Google Canada's assets are within Canada's influence).
Also, US prohibits companies from doing business with certain entities only if they have certain leverage (like access to USD). Tomorrow, if some Chinese govt owned enterprise were to deal with Iran or North Korea, I doubt US can do much there.
That's exactly my point: The penalties foreign countries can exact upon the company is pretty limited, as far as a giant international corporation is concerned.
I definitely think Canada has the right to require that Google obey it's judgement (because, again, as a sovereign nation, Canada can demand anything it wants of entities that do business there), but the cost of noncompliance isn't high enough in most cases. The Canadian Supreme Court has three Google offices worth of leverage to hold over Google to get them to comply, but most countries don't have that sort of power.
In many cases, corporations are currently more powerful than sovereign nations, and I don't think that's a good thing.
Now I am confused - where exactly do you stand? Should company executives be extradited for not obeying some random country's law even if they haven't broken any law in their home country? If so, I vehemently disagree with you.
> In many cases, corporations are currently more powerful than sovereign nations, and I don't think that's a good thing.
Why not? Tuvalu has a population of 11,000 and a GDP of $34MM. Why should it have more power than Apple, who has 120K employees and $230B revenue in 2017? There are 140 other countries whose GDP is less than Apple, and 40 whose population is less than Apple. Why should they have more power than Apple?