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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

> It was only after Mr. Sullivan’s team shut off eBay access to all of Romania — with a message blaming eBay’s shuttering on Romanian law enforcement’s refusal to pursue online criminals — that Romanian police took action.

Jeez. While I get the frustration that eBay had with fraudsters, this is yet another case (after Amazon trying to extort France in the corona conflict, or Uber and AirBnB ignoring local court orders) of a major US tech company to outright crap on national sovereignity of an European country.

How can us Europeans protect against this kind of moves? Especially with the current US President being someone who would retaliate for anything that he gets complained about?

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> major US tech company to outright crap on national sovereignity of an European country.

Isn't this just a modern version of merchants refusing to land at a given port of call because there is no navy defending from pirates, and the pirates know it?

I would argue that this is not anyone crapping on anyone's sovereignty.

Nobody would accuse the company of being pretentious for refusing to let their crews be preyed upon with impunity, it would fall to the local citizens to demand the pirates get gone, or they continue not to be able to get goods from that particular merchant?

US tech companies certainly do have bullying problems. I'm not sure this is one, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

American companies regularly fight with the American government too. There was a story a while back, for example, where the FBI demanded that Apple unlock a mass shooter's phone and Apple refused. If you want companies that consider themselves subservient to the government, you'll probably need to build your own, because Americans just don't think that way.

There is one thing to argue with politicians, that's fine. Ignoring courts however? That is unacceptable in any case as long as the court is not in a banana republic (i.e. truly independent).

Again, Americans don't see it that way. The FBI had a court order for Apple to do it.

The FBI didn't want or need Apple's help unlocking a shooter's iPhone. They wanted Apple to give them a "skeleton key" firmware to unlock all iPhones on their own, without court review. Apple refused.

Yeah, moments like that make me proud to be an American.

Which part of Ebay refusing to do business in Romania is "ignoring courts"?

The grandparent comment (not the story) said some words about US companies not considering themselves "subservient to the government", and the child comment (the one you replied to) said "but these companies have to obey the courts."

I'd say the GP comment over-reached by implying that a US company is not ultimately subject to US law. In principle, the companies do have to obey the courts, although in practice, there are multiple ways for companies to contest the power of a single court.

If appealing to a higher court is what is meant by "ignoring courts and being a banana republic", that doesn't make much sense to me. What's the purpose of having higher courts to appeal to if not so that people or companies can do exactly that? To me, "ignoring a court" is contempt of court, and courts have mechanisms available to them to deal with it. It's the sort of thing people get tossed into prison for. Appealing things to higher courts is not contempt of court.

But I don't see how any of this relates to a merchant refusing to do business in a country that neglects to prosecute thieves and scammers. I assume it's somehow meant to relate to that, since the conversation is threaded that way, but I can't work out the connection.

There's nothing wrong about not doing business in a country. You can't force a company to do business in your country. Actions have consequences even for countries.

Why should Ebay be obligated to do business with Romania if Romania refuses to rein in scammers on the platform? It seems Ebay was more important to Romania than Romania was to Ebay since they did in fact do something about the scammers after access was revoked. If they had instead ignored the Ebay block and built their own online platform that would have also been a perfectly acceptable move in line with their sovereign right to choose how they govern their country.

Being free to make judicial decisions such as whether to prosecute online scammers does not free you from the consequences of those decisions. If you want to have access to international platforms you must observe and enforce a set of norms that makes international commerce tenable.

What does this have to do with sovereignty? They aren't obligated to do business internationally.

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