Comment Re:Reasonable, legal, and likely... (Score 1) 629
Sorry, but you can't go back to a(/n admittedly beautiful) letter of "screw you" as a way to override the United States Constitution, the highest law of the land. The DoI defines the philosophy of liberty, then declares that the British government had been molesting the rights and lives of millions, that the colonies will immediately separate from Britain, and finally lists all the reasons why. Therefore it is irrelevant that the specific phrase, "Free Speech" goes unmentioned in the DoI, for the Right is specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights, a direct element of the aforementioned United States Constitution.
The real issue here is that it is the British government that is trying to globally ban videos that are hosted in another country when it is clearly not their place to do so. They can ask Google to ban said videos from being viewed by British IPs, but to tell Google to outright delete the videos because they're "bad in the UK" seems like a foreign power attempting to dictate another country. See, if this was simply an independent choice on Google's part to remove these videos, then yes that would be another issue. Even if a British -company- asked Google to pull the videos, it might just be different. But the British government is getting involved with affairs concerning what American people are viewing, with content hosted in the USA, based solely on the idea that these videos are not allowed in Britain. If I'm Google, I suggest my previous idea of keeping British IP addresses from viewing the requested videos so as to not get Google banned from Britain for violating their laws. However, there is zero obligation on Google's part whatsoever to deprive the people of America, or of any other non-British territory, simply because agents working for the British Prime Minister said they should. Only if another country requests IP bans for ranges from their own country should Google/YouTube feel any sort of obligation to comply.
The real issue here is that it is the British government that is trying to globally ban videos that are hosted in another country when it is clearly not their place to do so. They can ask Google to ban said videos from being viewed by British IPs, but to tell Google to outright delete the videos because they're "bad in the UK" seems like a foreign power attempting to dictate another country. See, if this was simply an independent choice on Google's part to remove these videos, then yes that would be another issue. Even if a British -company- asked Google to pull the videos, it might just be different. But the British government is getting involved with affairs concerning what American people are viewing, with content hosted in the USA, based solely on the idea that these videos are not allowed in Britain. If I'm Google, I suggest my previous idea of keeping British IP addresses from viewing the requested videos so as to not get Google banned from Britain for violating their laws. However, there is zero obligation on Google's part whatsoever to deprive the people of America, or of any other non-British territory, simply because agents working for the British Prime Minister said they should. Only if another country requests IP bans for ranges from their own country should Google/YouTube feel any sort of obligation to comply.
