ABSTRACT
Courts in multiple jurisdictions increasingly issue ‘global’ takedown and de-indexing orders against online intermediaries. While these remedies can prevent harm and evasion, they raise hard problems of international jurisdiction, conflicts of law, freedom of expression, and crossborder enforceability. This paper comparatively analyzes leading cases, including CJEU’s Glawischnig (global removal of identical and ‘equivalent’ content) and Google v CNIL (no worldwide delisting requirement), as well as Canadian, Indian, and Australian precedents. Building on the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law and principles of international comity, it proposes a high-threshold test for extraterritorial injunctions-necessity, proportionality, least-restrictive means, geographic tailoring, temporal limits, and periodic review-together with due process guarantees for notice, challenge, and reinstatement. The paper further assesses how emerging regulatory frameworks (eg, the EU Digital Services Act), ongoing Australian enforcement disputes, and ‘online harms’ initiatives shift both the feasibility and desirability of cross-border remedies. A modular governance blueprint is offered to embed interoperable safeguards into cross-border removal mechanisms, reducing over-removal risks while preserving effective redress.
Chang, Soyoung, Global Takedown Orders in the GDPR Era: New Internet Governance on Transnational Cooperation (April 15, 2025).
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