alt Hacker News> 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.
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> Does it really make sense for legacy states to be able to bind transacations on the internet?
Sites like paypal and escrow.com need licenses for every state in the US to carry on business (Mostly called money transmission licenses, but there are a few other names and regulations depending on the state). Yes, it is just as big a compliance nightmare as you'd expect.
So yes, it does happen.
And anyway, as this case shows, if you have customers in a state you need to follow the laws of that state. This is why Pornhub have stopped servicing various states.
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> Does it really make sense for legacy states to be able to bind transacations on the internet?
Yes.
We have a problem right now where the only place democracy, sensible laws and due process take place is in meatspace.
The internet - insomuch as it’s a real place, is a feudal society. It’s made up of small fiefdoms (websites) and some larger kingdoms which exert tyrannical power within their borders. They watch everything you do - usually to advertise to you. And they can banish you at a moments notice if doing so would result more profit for their rulers.
There’s an interesting argument you can make that the internet should be its own sovereign space. “Information wants to be free” and all that. Maybe if the internet was created 200 years ago, during the period of time when constitutions were being written everywhere, we would have created one for the internet. And then, maybe, the internet could have policies and courts and rules that uphold the rights of people. But that hasn’t happened. We have, through our collective inaction, delegated judicial oversight of the internet to sovereign states in meatspace. And thank goodness. Somebody needs to tell internet companies that my personal data is not for sale. Or tell Apple that they aren’t entitled to 15-30% of Netflix’s revenue after already selling a user their phone. (And don’t they dare redirect users to their website!)
If us technologists won’t govern ourselves, we delegate that important job to the state of California. To the European Union. To Australia’s department of fair trade & ACCC. And so on. It means we get a fractured Internet. But people have inalienable rights that need to be defended. Those rights must not be undermined just because we’re online and there’s a profit to be made.