[Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

[Vittorio Bertola]

Il 2022-05-26 17:25 Ted Hardie via Chapter-delegates ha scritto:

> Dear Richard,
> 
> I think you interpret LICRA v. Yahoo in a way that the facts of the 
> case do not bear out.  The point of the ruling was that the sales of 
> memorabilia were illegal in France despite the servers being in the US. 
>  This would tend to argue against the need to force services to be 
> delivered in country, since these exceptional cases can already be 
> handled wherever the servers are physically located.

The reason behind the current trend for data localisation requirements 
in Europe is motivated exactly by the difference in national 
regulations, especially in terms of privacy and data protection. The 
European Court of Justice ruled that the laws of most countries outside 
of the EU (including the U.S.) do not adequately protect the data of 
European citizens, so their data should not be exported there. In 
particular, the concern about the U.S. is related to the CLOUD Act, that 
forces American companies to disclose data of European citizens to 
American law enforcement agencies, even if the servers are in Europe. 
While there are differences (and lawsuits) in terms of interpretation of 
this act, of course the safest bet for the moment is to keep all 
European data on servers managed by European companies, and public 
officers concerned about this problem are pushing just that.

I don't see how this is "fragmenting the Internet", though. I understand 
the complaints by the American big tech industry, as this is damaging 
their business, but it is not different from any other issue related to 
the fact that you have to comply with local regulation to sell your 
products in a given country, which has always been the case. Nobody ever 
complained that the US is "fragmenting the world" by forbidding 
Europeans from importing certain food products into their country, 
right? So this has nothing to do with the technical or network 
architecture of the Internet, it is a business and legal issue.

-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->       now blogging & more at https://bertola.eu/   <--------
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