Just happened to bump into this bit of news at news.com http://news.com.com/Even+in+Net+litigation%2C+its+all+about+location/2010-1028_3-6180169.html?tag=nefd.top
The gist is that to establish the appropriateness of legal jurisdiction, an internet company must have a significant presence in the jurisdiction in question. The sound bite is that this means that there's a precedent for protecting internet operations from legal proceedings in all localities where they have some presence... that's not good enough, it has to be significant.
And wow, am I not an attorney. But this struck me as interesting in a couple of additional ways. First, I really like this notion of appropriate jurisdiction as it might be applied to virtual worlds. In some sense, to me, it seems like this might be a very reasonable and useful perspective on some of the amazingly complex questions of the law as applied to online communities.
And secondly, it seems to offer some tacit recognition of these entities as distinct cultures and/or legal domains... ie. that within the greater context of a national legal format, it might make sense to recognize the unique characteristics of online worlds as meaningful, and to address legal questions from that perspective.
Actually too, I think it's interesting as an example of how our culture works out responses to new permutations or occurrances... faced with these new circumstances, we're, collectively, working out how we think it's best to regard them, and behave around them, from a variety of perspectives... not the least of which is that codified set of community organizational principles that we call the law.
I find this perspective, too, sort of encouraging.
Thoughts?
This keeps well with International Shoe v. Washington: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Shoe
Summary: Shoe had salesmen in Washington State. Shoe was not paying taxes. Washington State said taxes were due. Shoe said no way. Went to Supreme Court. Supreme Court of U.S. said Shoe owes taxes, Washington State had jurisdiction to sue and right to taxes because Shoe doing significant business in Washington State.
To me, it only makes sense. If a company wants to sue you, they have to sue you in your state. If you want to sue the company or someone else, then you have to sue in their state. The definition of there state is what can be contentious.
Accepted basic definitions are any state in which they do significant business. So, state of headquarters, state of incorporation, state of significant workforce, state of significant direct advertising, state of primary intended sales, state of primary hardware/servers. This can be a lot of states, but it means the company has at least some presence in each of those places.
On an International Scale, China, France, and Germany break these rules all the time in relation to Internet Companies. Often they sue in their own country and jurisdiction, even when it should not be directly applicable to the company at hand. The question is whether the goods are being marketed to their country or not and the level of inconvenience. This is one of the needs for an international court that handles international action and jurisdiction for interaction on the Internet.
... Right, going to stop now before I go deeper into this argument.
Good post and great food for thought.
J/
Posted by: Jay | May 03, 2007 at 10:53 AM
Please note that the US and states within the US do the same thing. The Internet gambling law is a clear example, but there is also the scenario where companies with online content have been sued for breaking obscenity laws in states where they do not operate.
Governments have used targeted marketing to show presence in a jurisdiction.
Posted by: Steven "PlayNoEvil" Davis | May 05, 2007 at 08:50 PM