alt Hacker NewsThe "online retailer" (IABMFG) in this case is based in California.
A company in California, selling to a customer in California, shouldn't be able to say "California law doesn't apply because my payment processor is Canadian." And if Shopify wants to take a cut of every sale from retailers based in California, they should be willing to comply with California law as well, at least insofar as it applies to the services provided via those California-based retailers' web sites.
(The actual opinion is linked at the bottom of the submission; I humbly suggest folks commenting here should read it first: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2025/04/21/2...)
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> And if Shopify wants to take a cut of every sale from retailers based in California, they should be willing to comply with California law as well,
For the moment, for purpose of consumer protections, fine. But on longer time scales, I'm not sure. Does it really make sense for legacy states to be able to bind transacations on the internet? Doesn't that just make it a very large intranet?
Obviously information refuses to be stopped by borders. Are we going to have a situation where states of various sizes try to claim jurisdiction, but only those with sufficiently violent tendencies (and thus the ability to achieve compliance by fear) succeed? Won't that corrupt the internet even worse than an absence of state-based consumer protections?
If two people who live 500 miles apart in the area currently claimed by the State of California, but do not recognize the State of California, and regard themselves as citizens of the internet, and, who is right, them, of the government of California?
Most of us will probably say that there is some social contract by which, for better or worse, the State of California is right.
But what if, in 100 years, California goes bankrupt. Does that change the calculus? If so, why? And does it change retroactively, for the purposes of historical classification of internet transactions? The diplomatic and economic affairs of state don't change the operation of internet protocols. It's hard to even fully imagine how to create an internet whose shapes are coterminous with the boundaries asserted by various states.
I'm broadly skeptical of any judicial rulings which extend the laws of the legacy states onto the internet, even if they appear to be on the side of short-term justice. This whole thing is starting to feel like a bandaid better ripped off quickly.
To be clear, this isn't a choice-of-law case. It's not about whether California law applies. It's about whether a court in California has jurisdiction; that is, whether it can hear the case at all.