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0 pointsint_19h7y ago0 comments

No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that American companies are obligated to not help other governments implement oppressive laws, or, in general, aid and abet in carrying out things that we consider despicable as a culture. This is not at all the same as American companies spreading American law elsewhere. The law should be applied to those companies operating here (in particular, any of their management and engineers here) not to their foreign customers.

Similarly, if China would punish any company that, say, does not censor information about Tienanmen protests here in US, that's their business. That does not push their censorship laws on me in any meaningful sense - it means that if I deal with a Chinese company, I get Chinese censorship, which is reasonable and expected; or I can deal with an American or a European company instead. There's no law applied to me either way.

0 pointsint_19h7y ago0 comments

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tsunamifury7y ago· 2 in thread

You are ultimately saying within a sovereign nation you should abide by the law of that nation but the cultural values of another.

int_19hOP7y ago

And again, no.

I'm saying that you should abide by the law of the nation where you're performing an activity - say, designing and implementing some piece of software - regardless of where the fruits of your labor will eventually be deployed. And the law of that nation will, of course, be based on its cultural values. So if the culture of that nation frowns upon helping to oppress people in certain ways, then you shall not do so while in the jurisdiction of that nation, regardless of where the oppressed people are located.

None of this imposes any cultural values on anyone who is not in the jurisdiction of our nation. If China wants to have their Panopticon, they can still do it - themselves. But Google doesn't get to help them to do so, because it is an American company, and people who implement these tools of oppression are American residents, subject to American laws and cultural values. China doesn't have any natural right to the fruits of their labor.

Really, this is no different from prohibiting or regulating arms exports. Do you have similar objections to, say, arms embargo on DPRK?

tsunamifury7y ago

I think the idea of a corporation as a single nationalized identity is where we disagree, and probably the law breaks down as well. As in function this is not true.

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