The decision simply states that EU law does not prevent a national court from specifying than an injunction to remove content from a platform should apply worldwide, as long as it is otherwise legal to do so (it also complies with international law, etc.). [1]
"the Directive on electronic commerce, ..., does not preclude a court of a Member State from ordering a host provider ... to remove information covered by the injunction or to block access to that information worldwide within the framework of the relevant international law, and it is up to Member States to take that law into account."
[1] https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...
What about radio waves?
Do they claim that any communication that leaves one country and goes into theirs is now under their control?
This is a really, really bad precedent to be setting.
As I understand the issue. I might have misunderstood.
No, they believe that they have no right to tell Member States to not even ask as long as it's "within the framework of the relevant international law, and it is up to Member States to take that law into account."
Titles for this particular topic were chosen to cause indignation and get clicks. Trying to get the right idea from just the title these days is begging for misunderstandings.
On the other hand don't forget the DMCA. It's US's way of doing exactly what you are outraged about to other countries, as long as the company targeted also operates in the US. Or government mandated backdoors that also apply elsewhere.
If Facebook were to pull out from France, there is almost nothing that France could do to force Facebook to comply.
This is why Google left the Chinese market. They did not want (or, more specifically, their employees refused) to comply with certain Chinese laws.
How to avoid Great Firewall, while blocking FB:
France could expect Facebook to deny requests for content originating in France, regardless of where FB servers are. No need for a Great Firewall; make FB implement the firewall.
Legal justification (if not ethical):
The server locations are irrelevant because the data has cross the border into France.
Enforcement (how to force FB to block itself):
Easy: make the executives criminally liable. Also, anyone working on FB infrastructure could be held criminally liable.
France is a big and important country, they have heft to get their way from companies like FB.
What's not reasonable is to force them to block people in other countries (and also those taking significant efforts to conceal their identity) - at least there is no international law (compared to international deals) justifying that anyhow.
I understand and support that companies have to comply to the laws of the country where they are operating/targeting an audience. If worldwide dispersion of content banned in your country is such a concern, you can either push it to the UN OR you make according deals with the states harboring the companies.
Otherwise you can go down the great firewall route and there's little difference between that and forcing hoster to effectively implement the firewall worldwide.
Real-life example: weed is legal in the Netherlands. So all neighbors could now force the Dutch to close all coffeeshops OR block all their citizens from entering the Netherlands. I don't see any difference to this case.
It's about courts in the EU imposing things on EU hosts. Facebook has legal subsidiaries in the EU.
Companies that are present in several countries do have to employ lawyers to comply with each country's law.
It's like when the SEC fines an EU bank. It's not that the SEC has jurisdiction in the EU, it's that the EU bank has a subsidiary in the US and does business there.
But in my opinion compliance is reached if they just do geoblocking in the areas affected by the law/delete content if it's originating there? If someone uses a VPN he's basically traveling to another jurisdiction for all practical purposes?
a) a neo-colonial relapse: Europe knows what's right for the world.
b) another step at the official adoption of authoritarianism on this world. How about the Chinese government taking down any material on the existence of Tinamen-Square-massacre (yeah, I know, it was just a peaceful sit-in and the people just progressed to a higher plane of existence so there's noone left to tell the story) or the existence of the NRC worldwide? It's great for business certainly!