Scope of jurisdiction online and the importance of messaging – lessons from Australia and the EU

Where a court makes an order, for example, requiring an Internet platform to block or remove content, it has several options. The order can be limited to content displayed locally, it can apply to that content globally, or something in-between. This – the matter of ‘scope of jurisdiction’ – is gaining increasing attention and was the central issue in two recent decisions by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

In this article, I examine those two decisions. I then compare that to how Australian courts have dealt with scope of jurisdiction and I map out what we can learn from these cases. In doing so, I place emphasis on the importance of messaging and the need for judicial activism.