[frankfrankfrank]

This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them. What this is all about is incremental conditioning towards normalizing censorship for "local law" violations … the same kinds of wanton "laws" conjured up by all the dictatorial regimes that all the western societies are quickly drifting towards.

The German government has even tried attacking Gab, and regardless of what you may think of Gab, it is not a good thing if you do not want to find yourself one day having overslept living in a totalitarian regime. Just consider the implications of a foreign government taking action against a US website, wholly based in the USA, because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land (Constitution), and are in line with all principles of human rights.

It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA or even just negatively discussing actions and behaviors of Americans, just as much as it would be evil for anyone else to do that.

We are entering a really dangerous situation where people are sleepwalking into supporting authoritarianisms, simply because they are conditioned to think they are part of the in-group. But that never lasts once the trap doors are slammed shut.

You either support freedom, free speech, and human rights or you don't; there is no freedom and human rights light.

[hutzlibu]

"You either support freedom, free speech, and human rights or you don't; there is no freedom and human rights light. "

You either are totalitarian in your ideology, or you have no ideology. Or something like this?

I am very pro free speech, much more than the average. But even I think there are limitations. It is not all black and white. Example?

"I think person X is doing not so smart things"

"I think person X is an idiot"

"I think person X is an idiot and needs to die"

"I think person X is and idiot and we need to kill him"

Where is the clear line from free speech to insult and then to inciting violence for example?

[zaarn]

>This is clearly a bait and switch. If illegal actions are being perpetrated (e.g., death threats) then prosecute them.

They are. The operators of the channel have an open arrest warrant for inciting hatred, denying the holocaust and death threats against public and private persons.

> wholly based in the USA because it does not like things on the website that are no only legal in the USA, protected by the fundamental rights and laws of the land, and are in line with all principles of human rights.

That changes when the "wholly USA" website is being used by German citizens, who are under jurisdiction.

>It would be evil and unethical for the USA to, e.g., use the US government to attack a French website for disparaging things about the USA

I's not about "disparaging things about the <country>", it's about running a website or service and not reacting to the fact that actual nazis are using the service. (You know with the eugenics and everything!)

If you think stopping nazis is authoritarianism, then you'd be the same kind of person that lets authoritarianism bootstamp all over them in the name of freedom. (Paradox of Tolerance)

[mannerheim]

> That changes when the "wholly USA" website is being used by German citizens, who are under jurisdiction.

Then block the website in your country. If I have no physical, legal, or economic presence in your country, I shouldn't expect to have to follow your laws. Do I need to start enforcing Thai lèse majesté laws too, now?

[zaarn]

Well you don't. Telegram blocked the channel in germany. So I don't get what your anger is all about then. Telegram Operators were given the choice of leaving germany entirely and blocking users there, be blocked by germany or remove the channel. They choose their favorite option.

[mannerheim]

Germany forced Project Gutenberg to block them for a time as well.

This should not be the responsibility of the website owner to comply with the laws of a country they don't have a presence in, presumably under threat of either extradition or arrest if they one day happen to enter the borders of the country.

If the website doesn't comply with the laws of the country, that country should block it, and that should be the extent to the action they can reasonably take. Unless you think Belarus should be able to arrest somebody passing through their airspace because, say, some other individual made a comment critical of Lukashenko on their blog?

[zaarn]

So you also think that website owners should not be allowed to block content if they think a particular country is worth their business? Because that is what is actually happening, not made up fantasies about "forcing them". Either you block or they block, and it's not a crime for one side to do it first (what should I bet that if Germany blocked Telegram it would be a similar outrage in the comment section???)

[mannerheim]

No, I think countries should not be allowed to bully people who have no presence in their country under threat of extradition or arrest if they ever happen to step foot in their country.

Project Gutenberg ended up complying with German copyright law even though they have zero presence in Germany precisely because they were bullied in this fashion.

[irtigor]

Liking it or not you do have legal or economic presence when you accept people in Germany to visit your site (e.g at first more than a few American websites simply blocked all EU traffic after GDPR was approved), and if you keep violating the local law after being requested to cooperate, they will fine, emit arrest requests and sure enough if deemed necessary also block your website temporarily/permanently, in other words they will do what they would do in any other case even if the full application of the law is less effective because you are not physically there (or have any interest to be) to personally see a big difference in your quality of life.

[mannerheim]

Then block the website. It's not my responsibility to bring my website into compliance with the laws of all 200 countries in the world and the laws of the jurisdictions within them. Because of VPNs, it's impossible to tell which users belong to which countries (and even without it, geo IP isn't that reliable).

> e.g at first more than a few American websites simply blocked all EU traffic after GDPR was approved

Those websites have parent companies who have an economic presence in the EU.

[irtigor]

Or they didn't have a parent company with even more economic presence than just them (serving American-centric news with ads), but they would like to have that path still easily open in the future, after all its a big market and... that's the point. Off course you can literally ignore all legal requests for compliance from all foregein countries until they do the worst that they can legally do to you which isn't much if you truly have no particularly strong personal or business related interest in them (lose users that you didn't care to have in the first place, cut a travel destination off your list because if you show up you can be held in prison for not paying a fine... Or whatever), but telegram is not you and apparently they care about being able to continue do business there (allowing people in Germany to use the chat app), so not complying is not a option.

[mannerheim]

Should Belarus be allowed to arrest a blogger who enters their airspace because somebody else made a critical comment about Lukashenko on their blog?

[Zak]

It seems to me there are three possible ways law on the internet can work, to include ill-defined hybrids between them. Please let me know if I've missed any:

1. The law where a service is hosted applies. Entities in other legal jurisdictions may not be allowed to do business with the service (e.g. run ads on it) if it doesn't follow the law where they're located. Cost: people may be able to access content that's illegal where they live.

2. The law where the user is located applies. Anyone putting up a website must familiarize themselves with the laws of 195 countries where users could be and comply with all of them, or at least the ones that have a friendly relationship to the host's country. Service operators must block users from jurisdictions with laws they can't obey. Cost: this is a nightmarish compliance landscape only large companies can deal with; the internet becomes much less global.

3. Countries put up a Great Firewall of X. Cost: the hacker community has traditionally considered censorship bad; the internet becomes much less global.

[zaarn]

If you do business in a country, laws of that country apply to you. Selling apps in that country would count I presume. Part of the threat from the german government was to have GPlay and Apple delete the app from german storefronts.

I don't see how that is much of an issue.

[Zak]

In the case of Telegram, no selling takes place; the app is free.

I can get the Android version from Google's store, which is uncontroversially subject to German law because Google has physical offices and a financial presence in Germany. I can also download it from telegram.org, which to my knowledge does not have a physical or financial presence in Germany.

Germany probably has the legal authority to order Google to stop distributing the Telegram app and can use that authority to pressure Telegram. What remains unresolved is the degree to which Germany can act against Telegram directly.

[zaarn]

Well, it seems very much like Telegram wants to continue being on the German Play Store. And yes, Telegram is very much selling things, even if the price, at the moment is 0$. They're also going into the ad business, if you check their business web presence.

[mannerheim]

The German government has a broader view than just this. See the Project Gutenberg case. PGLAF has zero presence in Germany, yet the German government claimed jurisdiction simply because the website had German-language content.

[hedora]

Two things:

1) If the site is run as a tor endpoint, and says "no German users allowed", I wonder how the jurisdiction thing plays out. (Yes, I'm asking HN for legal advice!)

2) The US recently had Mein Kampf toting neo-nazis working in the white house (Trump's PR team didn't even bother hiding this, and publicly praise Hitler's propaganda machine.) So, the US is pretty far down the Paradox of Tolerance rathole. At some point we'll need to flip the "Nazis must die!" bit like we did in WWII, unless the GOP corrects it's own course.

Apparently Pence publicly disagreed with our deposed dictator about the VP's ability to unilaterally overthrow elections. Trump didn't resort to name calling like he usually does. (Over 70% of Trump voters and 75% of Americans agree with Pence on this, for what it's worth.)

Maybe there's still reason to hope the US isn't headed to some sort of Apartheid-style "democracy", where idiots run everything and just ignore election results. Maybe?

[zaarn]

>1) If the site is run as a tor endpoint, and says "no German users allowed", I wonder how the jurisdiction thing plays out. (Yes, I'm asking HN for legal advice!)

Ask your lawyer. Not any lawyer but yours. Anyone else answering is likely to give you bad answers, especially on HN.

[stjohnswarts]

> That changes when the "wholly USA" website is being used by German citizens, who are under jurisdiction.

Then Germans will have to prosecute those going to the website and using it or remove it from German DNS servers. Germany has no right to try and limit the rights of US citizens by extension of limiting those of Germans.

> I's not about "disparaging things about the <country>", it's about running a website or service and not reacting to the fact that actual nazis are using the service. (You know with the eugenics and everything!)

As much as I hate the Nazis, Nazi sentiment is not illegal in the USA as long as they stay within the law. The German government has no right to push their ideology and laws here. Again block Germans from the site or sue to have Parler block German user IP addresses (good luck with that, it won't last 5 minutes before the judge laughs and says "next case")

[zaarn]

>Then Germans will have to prosecute those going to the website and using it or remove it from German DNS servers. Germany has no right to try and limit the rights of US citizens by extension of limiting those of Germans.

And? That's exactly what happened. The Telegram Operators were given a choice and they picked. If a US operator is given the same choice, they can pick no business with German users or remove the content the germans don't like. If they pick the later, you have no business to complain about that, really, since it doesn't affect you as US citizen.

>As much as I hate the Nazis, Nazi sentiment is not illegal in the USA as long as they stay within the law. The German government has no right to push their ideology and laws here. Again block Germans from the site or sue to have Parler block German user IP addresses (good luck with that, it won't last 5 minutes before the judge laughs and says "next case")

Nazis have no right to push their ideology here. Nor should they have anywhere. "They ought to be hammered back into the holes they crawled out of" to cite a recently popular music single in germany. All their ideology leads to is authoritarianism, oppression, violence and war.

[stjohnswarts]

I'm not sure if you're a US citizen or not but if you are then you know regardless of your opinion then there is nothing you can do about Naziism as long as they stay within parameters of the law. From a legal standpoint you're wrong, they absolutely can and do operate in the USA up and until the point they break the law. That's why there is a 1st amendment to protect our opinions from government intervention as long as it falls under protected speech. You can preach all the naziism that you want but the first time you attack someone because of the hate filled racism that it inspires or you collude to overthrow the government, then you're going to jail.

[zaarn]

I think the USA Standpoint on allowing Nazis is wrong. Plain and simple. It should be illegal to have publicly expressed opinions like "the holocaust never happened" and "jews ought to be exterminated".

I would also point out that Nazis didn't "collude to overthrow the government" until they were well in control of the police, the courts and the military. So don't think your 1st amendment rights or any rights protect you from them.

[stjohnswarts]

Again, I respect that is your opinion. I am glad you have the freedom to say it openly. I'll err on the side of freedom every time over government telling me how to think. Have a great day, I am through here.

[raxxorrax]

Don't underestimate the inflexibility of German society. It is very conservative while believing itself not to be.

The laws against insults stem from a feudal honor system, it is not about dignity. Dignity != Honor. One is intrinsic, one is extrinsic. Of course there is a red line where an insult becomes defamation, but German law is quite old and laws are very slowly deprecated. There are still articles against blasphemy for example.

Common law countries are the much more advanced societies in this regard. But even discussing this in Germany is next to impossible. I would not recommend to even think about compromising with any demands out of Germany on this topic. The privacy approach is better, but the condemnation of "hate speech" only helped dictators around the world.