Internet and local law
Posted under Comments on the law
Remember all the talk in the late 1990s about how the Internet would change everything, and how regulators couldn’t enforce local laws because the Internet doesn’t really exist anywhere?
Well, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Consider the recent enforcement of the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSECCOM 568, October 7 2009), which settled with Rocky Mountain Gold Mining, a Delaware company. It wasn’t registered to do any business in British Columbia. However, on behalf of Rocky Mountain, Gibson maintained a website, hosted in British Columbia, for investors to review; when contacted by telephone or e-mail by 13 United Kingdom investors, Gibson responded by telephone or e-mail; and in one or two instances forwarded their names and numbers to Rocky Mountain’s US lawyer.
This was enough to be considered doing business from BC, and so Gibson settled with the Commission. I came across this case in my monthly review of regulatory cases for RegQuest, which I co-author with Justice Libman and Bernard Aron.