[Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

[Richard Hill]

I wonder whether there is an analogy to be made with roads: roads are intended to facilitate the transportation of persons and goods, including across national borders. But there are restrictions on what can be transported, both within national borders, and when crossing national borders.

 

Best,

Richard

 

From: Vittorio Bertola [mailto:vb at bertola.eu] 
Sent: Friday, 27 May 2022 11:40
To: Ted Hardie
Cc: Richard Hill; ISOC Chapters
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

 

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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