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by rmc
5336 days ago
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Exactly, unless they have a EU office, then they don't have to do anything. (In the same way Mr. Stross is free to say that Taiwan is not part of China (violate PRC law) or deny the holocaust happened (violate German law)). The reason Facebook is being hounded is because they have an EU incorporated company. |
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Setting that aside: http://www.out-law.com/page-479 provides some advice on the Brussels Regulation 2001 concerning e-commerce. The B2C provisions in particular seem weighted to protect consumers, even when the supplier business is outside the EU.
However ... "In the case of disputes involving countries which are outside the scope of European law, there are a number of issues which must be considered. There are a number of international conventions dealing with choice of law, and consumer rights. If these do not set out the relevant position it is then worth checking whether the UK has entered into an agreement with the foreign jurisdiction. Any such agreement would set out the basis on which jurisdiction is determined between the countries. Failing this it would be necessary to consider the legal position under UK law, and what the courts consider to be the appropriate forum for hearing legal issues."
So it's basically a horrendous hairball of treaty law and interlocking legal systems. (And to make matters worse, the USA has a fundamentally different approach to determining jurisdiction in e-commerce, established via case law rather than a regulation aimed at defining consumer protections.)