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Alarming Internet Jurisdiction Precedent Set

Posted on July 27, 1999

in News

by Seb Potter (Seb)

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Seb Potter

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User since: April 21, 1999

Last login: December 16, 2008

Articles written: 19

A New York Judge has ruled today that Web sites are legally liable under the laws of the country in which the site is being viewed.

The ruling states an Antiguan gambling website is liable under New York state gambling laws, simply because the site can be accessed from New York. This ruling mirrors a UK ruling from last week which states that someone resident in the UK is liable under UK pornography laws for material posted to a server in the United States.

At first, this does not sound like earth-shattering news, but think for a moment about how this could affect you.

Imagine that (like the defendant in the New York case) you run a gambling website in a country where gambling is legal. You might think that your website is perfectly legal as well. As a result of today's decision, you'd be wrong.

Judge Charles Exard Ramos has set the terrifying precedent that if you have a website, it must conform to the laws of every single country in which it can be viewed.

It could mean that the internet is going to require geographical restrictions to prevent legal sites from being viewed in certain areas where the site might be illegal. It certainly places the responsibility upon the website owner to ensure that their site is legal wherever it is viewed.

This ruling also means that people can sue the owners of a website under the most advantageous laws offered by any country or state, opening whole new realms of legal barriers to setting up on the internet.

The European Parliament is currently debating electronic commerce laws for Europe. One of the proposals under consideration is that any business selling on the web would have to conform to customer protection laws in the customer's country, and not in the country where the sale originates. This unfortunate proposal would place extraordinary burdens upon commerce websites and have the effect of severely limiting the growth of commerce on the internet. It is no longer difficult to see how such a clause might find its way into European law.

The Financial Times has the story on today's judgement, and the UK ruling can be found on the BBC News web site.

Seb is a Jedi Master in the art of creating sites and keeping servers running. This often means hitting them repeatedly with forces that defy rational explanation, though he prefers to descibe it as "administration". When he's not practising his percussive skills on E450s and AS400s, he can be found masquerading as the senior developer for some widely varied clients. It's still not certain whether or not the meanings of CMS, CRM, and B2B have penetrated the alcoholic fog enveloping his brain, but he makes convincing noises to customers about XML, XSLT, Python, J2EE, PHP, Perl, C++, and OpenGL.

Seb has been in the web game pretty much since it began, and still has fond memories of the time when a web could be swept aside with a duster and spam was pork luncheon meat. Despite being the developer of one of the first commerce sites in Europe, he has yet to make any real money.

Being English, Seb doesn't like SOAP, but instead has recently discovered something called ZOPE. Zope is a platform that runs Plone which he thinks is the coolest thing since high-performance, real-time 3D APIs, which he often writes small games in.

Seb lives in the best little city in the world, and used to commute 5 hours a day on British trains. He is subsequently immune to all forms of torture techniques.

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Submitted by MartinB on July 28, 1999 - 09:58.

While this is a worrying thin end of the wedge, the precedent (in legal terms anyway) is only set for New York State juristiction. Thus you probably wouldn't get away with citing it in Connecticut, and certainly not in Canada.

The UK ruling similarly is under English law - we have our own here in Scotland. The other interesting thing about the UK ruling is that it ruled that, because the offending site was produced in the UK, it was deemed to be published here, even though it was hosted in the US. And of course material published here is liable to law here.

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Submitted by damclean on July 28, 1999 - 13:03.

Yes, I can see the extradition hearings starting today! Not really.

Unless there is some giant threat to US National Security or commerce (which they are soooo protective about) not much will happen. It's like saying that a court ruling in New York now has jurisdiction on 5 billion people world wide. Give me a break! That's just plain arrogant.

From what I've seen, the Canadian government (my gov) doesn't want to have anything to do with local content providers, let alone providers abroad. Why does a NY state judge figure he has to do it?

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Submitted by jkrawec on November 1, 1999 - 08:45.

A little correction on the previous statement regarding the Canadian Governments stance on local content providers. The CRTC (the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) recently conducted hearings about hte need for government regulation of the Internet and Canadian ISP's for requirements of Canadian content. Only through the hard work put forth by CAIP (Canadian Association of Internet Providers) and other affiliated organizations was this concept blocked. During the hearings an Albertan Senator proposed a bill to hold ISP's responisble for their user's homepage content, citing an individuals homepage which contain child pornography. This notion was quashed as well. Canada actaully came very close to having a government controlled Internet Industry. Now if the CRTC would just put a reign on Bell and the cable companies and break the stranglehold that they have on high-bandwidth in Ontario and other provinces!

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Submitted by Anonymous on November 1, 1999 - 10:49.

A little correction on the previous statement regarding the Canadian Governments stance on local content providers. The CRTC (the Canadian equivalent of the FCC) recently conducted hearings about hte need for government regulation of the Internet and Canadian ISP's for requirements of Canadian content. Only through the hard work put forth by CAIP (Canadian Association of Internet Providers) and other affiliated organizations was this concept blocked. During the hearings an Albertan Senator proposed a bill to hold ISP's responisble for their user's homepage content, citing an individuals homepage which contain child pornography. This notion was quashed as well. Canada actaully came very close to having a government controlled Internet Industry. Now if the CRTC would just put a reign on Bell and the cable companies and break the stranglehold that they have on high-bandwidth in Ontario and other provinces!

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