I do remember making a very explicit 'note to self': Do not under any circumstances piss off a judge during a court session.
Feel free to ignore that, if you do please do blog about it.
"Contempt of Court includes the following behaviours:
- Fails to maintain a respectful attitude, remain silent or refrain from showing approval or disapproval of the proceeding
- Refuses or neglects to obey a subpoena
- Willfully disobeys a process or order of the Court
- Interfere with the orderly administration of justice or to impair the authority or dignity of the Court"
Further, the Judge themselves is in charge of deciding whether Contempt of Court has occurred.
No possible jury to convince or appeal to, just the judge.
They can have you imprisoned in under a day.
Contempt of Court is very serious.
Only if you're in their jurisdiction. And Google isn't a person to jail. And corporations have a way of making these things not attributable to any one person.
However, it would be better to state the argument given by the law professor in the article: "what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database". Find something that the judge cares about personally, and you'll find a country that opposes it. Google can also complain that it's being targetted - why not Bing? Yahoo? Any other search providers? Does Wikipedia have a page for the company? What about reseller companies, that resell the competitor - not only are they facilitators, they're witting facilitators? What about sites with user reviews? At what point do we draw the moral line about shooting the messenger?
And Google isn't a person to jail.
And corporations have a way of making these things not
attributable to any one person.
This looks like an example of @ziobrando's "Bullshit asymmetry principle" in action. You whip out some bullshit (unless I'm really misunderstanding what you are saying) in a one liner with no citations, but to refute it, someone would have to talk about the history of corporations, legal theories around them, compare and contrast with societies that never developed a similar idea (an interesting take on things: http://www.amazon.com/Long-Divergence-Islamic-Held-Middle-eb... ), and so on and so forth. That's a lot more effort than simply spouting some snark.
There's still a corollary in need of succinct definition/labeling: in context of a casual discussion, you make a fair point in a one liner with no citation, then someone criticizes it (in effect) for lacking peer-reviewed encyclopedic depth & thoroughness. (Ex.: "this car does 0 to 60MPH in 10 seconds" "uh, NO, you're not taking relativity into account! and you didn't cite any certified testing labs!" and from social context you feel compelled to elaborate on why your comment was sufficient, while the other loudly labels you a liar, ignores your objections, and marches off to disrupt other sane conversations.)
It does suggest I need to clarify that I believe that it is both the great strength and the great weakness of corporations.
Good point! :)
Jail == cannot conduct business for X years?
Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and other global IT companies are at an advantage here because they can always pack up and move but if they start pissing off the legal system in the larger economies it may very well backfire.
For 'brick and mortar' companies such tricks are a lot harder to pull off. Also, to protect against mutual damage governments can enter into collectives which have a lot more power against multi-nationals than any single country.
If a judge orders you 'x', you can appeal but in the meantime it is usually wise do 'x', unless you've very carefully weighed the risks and any fall-out and you decide to make a stand.
It's quite possible this is a case worth doing that for.
If 5% of the clicks actually like the new search engine, then Google would have lost 5% of it's clients in a day.
(Probably one very angry judge, but I wonder...)