Comment by dreamlayers
7 months ago
How is one country able to fine businesses in other countries? What legal authority or ability do they have to do anything?
7 months ago
How is one country able to fine businesses in other countries? What legal authority or ability do they have to do anything?
I invite you to search HN for 'libor' and see how many of the American users of this website were affronted by the vast fines dished out by the US government to UK-headquartered banks for manipulating the LONDON Interbank Offered Rate from their offices in London, UK. If you can find a single one I'll eat my hat.
Being a country means you can make your own laws so the authority question has a pretty clear answer. Unless you disaviow national borders and state power and such stuff generally of course. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty
Read the question you're replying to again. Its a question about jurisdiction.
If it affects UK citizens, living in the UK, then there's jurisdiction. Either the entities comply, remove their services to the UK, or they risk sanctions/being arrested when abroad/etc.
Why should a US company harm UK citizens just because they're in the US?
If you want to serve a market in another country you have to follow their rules.
In this case, Imgur have been misusing UK children's information. Considering the laws are pretty similar, I suspect they're misusing EU children's information too.
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It was about authority, synonymous with jurisdiction, I understood it. A sovereign country can decide they have authority/jurisdiction in anything they want. For example various countries have decided they can legally assassinate people in other countries even though other counties might not agree.
Placing the fines is pretty easy; they just go through their legal system, finish up the case and get their judgement. Russia has a giant outstanding fine against Google for example since Google is not censoring things the Kremlin doesn't like, even though Google has no corporate presence in Russia and the fine is iirc now larger than the entire world economy. (So it's an unrealistic amount designed to deter Google more than anything else in practice.)
The difficulty is getting enforcement; in practice, what happens is that the fine is put down as outstanding and if any executive or employee of the company enters the country, they're arrested and held hostage until the company pays up (or are held directly responsible for whatever the company is accused of). Most countries usually have corporate presency laws to avoid this sort of scenario though.
Alternatively, the judgement can be enforced through diplomatic channels, but that's a giant clusterfuck and unlikely to succeed unless it's something that's very blatantly a crime in both countries, since it's effectively retrying the case. (And even then it can depend on if the country just doesn't feel like cooperating for that specific case, for no other reason than spite; France for example is fond of doing this.)
Arresting executives is pretty extreme and not normally done. Generally countries will only go after assets and revenues in the country.
Even for local companies. I had a UK ltd company and it got some fines for not filling in the correct forms but you can just close it down still owing money, which I did, and there's no liability for the director(s).
It can't, that's why they moved out.
If you do business in a country you have to operate under that country's laws and regulations, regardless of where you are registered.
Most commonly it's the EU fining American tech for GDPR violations and related privacy shenanigans.
Right, but the UK is saying they'll fine Imgur even after Imgur blocked access. At that point, what tooth does the fine have? "You must pay this fine if you want to, err, nothing I guess"?
They used to have UK legal presence, and planning to move out. The UK is saying something like "crimes done during your presence won't be ignored".
If Imgur never had UK presence, then yeah there would be no teeth. But if you're doing business in a country you can't break the law then leave and expect them to just ignore what you did during that time.
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> they'll fine Imgur even after Imgur blocked access
after they have infringed the data protection laws.
For example, if I get a parking fine, and then move my car. I can't claim that now that I've moved my car, I'm not liable for the previous fine. This is no different.
There are various international economic laws, treaties and agreements between cooperating countries, whether or not any of them cover this scenario for to US, and whether the US would honour any agreement in the current political climate remains to be seen. But there are mechanisms in place that allow w the UK to reach US companies through each others legal systems to a degree and vice versa, regardless of asset location.
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If Imgur decides they want to make money in the UK after all, and they have an unpaid fine outstanding, that money can be seized to pay off the fine first.
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Just because they've blocked UK users doesn't mean they aren't making revenue from advertising operating via the UK.
Pay this fine if you don't want to be arrested when entering the UK? Not that they plan to after this...
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They're only threatening to fine them for previous violations of the law, not anything after they block access. Blocking access doesn't make the existing fine from when they were doing business in the UK go away, it just prevents future fines.
Whether they can collect the money while Imgur aren't doing business in the UK is a different argument, but it's not particularly controversial that a country can fine a business operating in its jurisdiction for violating that country's laws. Even if those laws are authoritarian bullshit.
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Honestly, that's the most noteworthy part of this. The EU hasn't pursued any site that just blocks EU access (see any number of US sites than aren't GDPR compliant and I can't access from Europe). The UK is threatening to do something nobody else has really done before. It's crazy, imo, because I can see a whole lot of sites immediately blocking the UK to avoid any potential litigation.
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Thanks. That needs to be in an HN guide somewhere, along with: online services cost money to run so don't be surprised that they need either fees or advertising.
Being accessible over the internet from a country can't be the same as having a physical presence there. Otherwise, anyone putting any content on the internet needs to comply with the laws of every single country.
In agreement. What's with the fines. They're not in your jurisdiction, block them or leave them.