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International

The "International" category contains notices demanding takedowns from sites outside of the United States, invoking non-US law. We post them to give transparency to the "notice and takedown" process. Chilling Effects does not currently have the resources to annotate these notices with respect to the varying laws that may apply, but posts data for informational purposes.

A few general notes: As with the U.S. C&Ds, Chilling Effects posting does not imply a judgment about the notice's legal validity, applicability, or indicate whether the notice was acted upon.

The varying substantive law of different countries means postings legal in one country might be unlawful in another. For example, French law outlaws public exhibition of Nazi symbols; U.S. law would protect that speech under the First Amendment. Jurisdiction, where and under what laws a person can be sued, matters too. Just because a website is accessible anywhere doesn't mean its proprietor can be sued anywhere. A U.S. company with no assets or business contacts abroad doesn't generally need to worry about non-U.S. law. Jurisdiction questions get murkier when a company has contacts or assets abroad -- Yahoo! sued a French group who had won an order from a French prohibiting Yahoo! from allowing French citizens access to Nazi memorabilia, (Yahoo v. LICRA). The 9th Circuit dismissed Yahoo's challenge on mootness and procedural grounds.

If you too want to contribute to the transparency of notice-and-takedown procedures around the world, please submit your C&Ds to Chilling Effects. If you are a lawyer or legal academic outside the U.S. who would like to participate in the Clearinghouse project, please let us know.

Recent Notices

  1. Legal Request to TWITTER from INDONESIA: Ministry of Communication and Information Technology
  2. Legal request to Twitter from Turkey/ Ankara 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace 2023/3231 Misc.
  3. Legal request to Twitter from Turkey/ Ankara 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace 2023-3266 Misc.
  4. Legal request to Twitter from Turkey/ Artvin Criminal Judgeship of Peace 2023/514 Misc.
  5. Legal Request to Twitter from Turkey-ICTA
  6. Legal Request to Twitter from Latvia - NGO
  7. Legal request to Twitter from Turkey/ Istanbul 6th Criminal Judgeship of Peace 2023/3096 Misc.
  8. Legal request to Twitter from Turkey/ Istanbul 7th Criminal Judgeship of Peace 2023/3273 Misc.
  9. Legal Request to Twitter from Japan - Tokyo District Court, 9th Division
  10. Legal request to Twitter from Turkey/ Aydin 1st Criminal Judgeship of Peace 2023/1219 Misc.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is jurisdiction?

Jurisdiction refers generally to the authorities who have legal power over you, or, where you could be sued. As a general matter, you can only be subject to the laws of the place where you are present or doing business. Mere publishing of a website, although it may be readable everywhere, does not make you subject to every state and country's law, but if your site offers business transactions with residents of a given state, you may be held to have "purposely availed" yourself of its laws and thus consented to its jurisdiction.