[Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

[Richard Hill]

Dear Ted,

 

We seem to be talking at cross-purposes. I was not referring to any specific digital sovereignty rules, but rather to the general principle that offline law applies equally online.

 

I’m not sure which specific digital sovereignty rules you are referring to. Can you please point to the rules that would mandate provision of customer support locally?

 

Best,

Richard

 

From: Ted Hardie [mailto:ted.ietf at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, 27 May 2022 19:20
To: Richard Hill
Cc: Vittorio Bertola; ISOC Chapters
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Digital sovreignty and splinternet

 

It's not clear to me which side of this you mean for the analogy to represent.  If you mean the current digital sovereignty rules, I don't think it works.  To me, those would be similar to saying that since the same Anti-NAZI regulations present in France are not present in Quebec, you cannot provide customer support from Quebec to France, since the customer support rep might use the open channel to support NAZI idealogies.  You must provide customer support locally, within the jurisdiction that has the Anti-NAZI regulations.

 

The risk is that this could escalate further, to saying that the French telephone system will only allow calls from territories which also have Anti-NAZI regulations like those in France, to avoid a similar issue.  That would splinter the telephony system.

 

regards,

 

Ted Hardie

 

On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 9:48 AM Richard Hill <rhill at hill-a.ch> wrote:

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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