If the court order specifies that it be taken down worldwide, and the court order isn't definitely illegal according to Indian law, and the Wikimedia Foundation has operations in India that they want to preserve, they may not have a choice.
I don't think that the Indian court has legitimacy to block the article to be displayed worldwide. It has no jurisdicition for the citizens of all other countries and also no jurisdiction against content that is not hosted in India.
But I guess that it was maybe more convenient for the wikimedia foundation to do it like that instead of doing geofencing that they might not have?
The legitimacy of Indian courts is something only Indian citizens and people living in India can decide. Other people may have opinions, but they are more or less irrelevant.
Anyway, the fundamental issue here is that domestic rulings often have international consequences. As a sovereign state, India obviously has the right to ban the Wikimedia Foundation, or any other foreign entity, from doing business within the county. That right is an essential aspect of sovereignty. If they don't like you, they can ban you. But if the Wikimedia Foundation values access to India more than their right to host a particular article, they may choose to comply with the demands of an Indian court, even in matters where the court does not have jurisdiction. And that compliance would technically be voluntary.
> India obviously has the right to ban the Wikimedia Foundation
I don’t think that’s obvious at all. In the US, constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assembly, etc apply regardless of nationality or citizenship status.
You are placing too much weight on constitutions. They are just temporary documents a sovereign state can rewrite at any time for any reason. Either by the process established in the existing constitution. Or by having a civil war or a revolution, with the winners deciding that the old constitution is void, because its supporters lost.
I think there’s a difference between human rights and legal rights. For instance people in North Korea have a right to freedom of thought, all people everywhere do, but that doesn’t mean their government recognises that right, or that they have the legal right. India, mind you, doesn’t have the legal right to block me from viewing this Wikipedia article in Australia, but it seems like they have the ability to do so.
I guess ultimately this comes down to whether you believe a government and the rights it enforces is legitimate because it has the biggest guns, or because that government was decided by the people, or the legitimacy is determined by the ethics of the government etc
> As a sovereign state, India obviously has the right to ban the Wikimedia Foundation, or any other foreign entity, from doing business within the county
I fundamentally disagree. The Indian State exists to serve its citizens, which are benefitted unambiguous by a free and unconstrained source like Wikipedia. The sovereignty of any state is subject to the benefit of its citizens, not the other way around.
That doesn't mean they won't try anyway, but let us not confuse what is technically or politically feasible with what is moral.
That's something only Indian citizens and people living in India can decide. Outsiders may have opinions, but they cannot override the will of the people who have a legitimate standing in the matters of the state.
And note how I included "people living in India" here. Legitimacy is a fuzzy concept. Citizenship is a legal category, and it should not matter for legitimacy as such. But it is widely accepted that citizens living outside their country still have a legitimate standing in the matters of the country. But beyond that, a legitimate government should serve the interests of the people factually living within the country. India does not have a large non-citizen population, and the distinction is mostly irrelevant with them. But some other countries do. If their governments only serve the interests of their citizens, they are fundamentally illegitimate.
Indian state can do what it feels correct. If Indian citizens disagree, then they can use the judicial system to compel the court to revert the decision in greater national interest (maybe ban that specific page being accessed from India). All, people, govt, ANI, Wikipedia, the editors of the page should feel that injustice is not being done to them.
This is something I've been curious about for a while. GDPR, IIUC, makes an EU law apply to things that happen inside the US (for example, EU person flies to the US and uses Facebook on US-housed servers with data stored in the US, GDPR apparently considers that in-scope for the law).
> This is something I've been curious about for a while. GDPR, IIUC, makes an EU law apply to things that happen inside the US (for example, EU person flies to the US and uses Facebook on US-housed servers with data stored in the US, GDPR apparently considers that in-scope for the law).
That's a common myth. The GDPR doesn't follow citizenship, even if a lot of unofficial guidance wrongly says that.
US-based businesses that aren't branches of companies established in the EU, not targeting people in the EU, and not profiling or otherwise monitoring the behavior of people in the EU are not subject to the GDPR. And "in the EU" cares about where the person's body is, not who issued their passport.
This European Commission summary of GDPR's Article 3 (Territorial scope) is informative:
However, your scenario may fall in-scope of the GDPR for a simple reason: the Meta Terms of Service specify that the data controller for users (and non-users) living in the EU is Meta Platforms Ireland Limited, which is a company established in the EU. When the data processor or controller activities are through a company or branch established in the EU, the GDPR applies no matter where in the world the person and the data are.
The problem is that as long as the court thinks it has legitimacy, and the guys with the guns agree, then it doesn't matter whether it "objectively" or by someone else's opinion has legitimacy. It doesn't matter who is "right", it matters who has which power.
Unlike the US, courts from India likely have limited power to affect Wikipedia operations outside of India. However, they can potentially send people to arrest anyone associated with the Wikimedia Foundation within India, and potentially keep them in jail until Wikimedia complies. (They can also have Wikipedia and donations flowing to the foundation blocked in a country representing something like 1/6th of the global population.)
Edit to add: Wikimedia on the other hand, has the power to block the article, then lean back with a giant bucket of popcorn knowing that it will achieve the exact opposite of what the court wanted to achieve.
You want operate in country X, you must comply with country X laws or be ready to be percecuted. (From notice, to confiscation of servers, to executions; depends on the X and how inconvenient you are)
More broadly, if country X has the capacity to enforce its rulings against you, it is risky to assume that they do not apply to you, irrespective of what you think should be the case base on how you operate, where you are located, your citizenship, etc.
Many states have a wide variety of provisions applying national law in ways that might be contrary to all kinds of naive assumptions about how their jurisdiction should be limited
Why is following other countries' laws viewed as "abandoning all principles"?
A few days ago Linux removed all Russian maintainers to follow US laws. Has the Linux Foundation abandoned all principles? Should they have fought the US government?
In some sense, they did. The spirit of free software is inherently pro-freedom and against any external actors being able to pressure your entity into submission. This includes any and all legal threats or orders. Look at the history of PGP for an instance of fighting the US government to defend a greater principle.
In practice you can't fight everyone all at once. On the net it may be better to compromise on some to defend others you cherish more.
The intent was to remove people of any nationality who work for Russian companies from being kernel maintainers. The way they rolled that out didn't match their intent, though.
