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Comment by ezoe | Hacker News Reader

What happened to a company who has no physical presence in France refuse to pay the tax on the ground that France has no jurisdiction upon them?

Ordering French ISPs to block the web service of that company thereby breaking the fundamental human right of freedom of speech and no censorship.

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I'm not sure the assumption that other countries give a damn about what the U.S. Constitution says is correct.

If they have French customers, the French government has jurisdiction.

If they don't have French customers, the French government blocking them would have no impact.

I'm not sure that fundamental right is correct, at least, outside of America. There's no fundamental human rights of freedom of speech and no censorship in New Zealand for example, as enshrined by law.

There are no freedom of speech laws that would apply to a corporation rather than a human, that I know of at least.

Newspapers etc. regularly use Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights to protect their ability to publish.

That freedom of expression is for the journalists, not the newspaper - that is my point.

France is already censoring Internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France

Blocking a website is not “breaking the fundamental human right of freedom of speech and no censorship”, at least not in France.

Simple.

France informs their customers that they need to withhold part of or even all of their payments to said company under penalty of criminal sanction. Customers comply, non-French company receives less money.

Non-French company then has 2 choices: accept defeat and pay the French tax, or cut the French customers and accept less revenue.

Well commerce isn't so unrestricted for one which gives tangible reach. They can easily forbid financial transactions and freeze accounts to tax delinquents.

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