Re: Embarrassed by the SCOC's lack of technical understanding ...
As another Canadian, I'm also a bit embarrassed about this but I think there's a couple of points you missed that change the complexion of this issue.
First, the SCOC is not supposed to consider the widespread results of their decisions: They are not lawmakers and not allowed to make laws they like. What they CAN do is make decisions that become law because they are precedents and those become common law. But the decisions are supposed to be made on the very specific facts around a specific case and nothing else.
In this specific case, they only looked at the egregious behaviour of the "bad guys" and the existence of the court orders. The fact this ruling opens up a big can of worms on the world stage is something they should not have considered, and indeed they did not make that mistake.
As for the "technical acumen" the SCOC displayed, I think you're incorrect and the SCOC was pretty smart. All they ruled was that Google must remove any of the villains' links from search results. There's no requirement to pull down the websites or anything that is outside of Google's purview. This is *technically* very easy for Google to do, and they already do this for other issues (such as terrorism websites, etc.) So, *technically* what they ruled is easily enforceable.
As for the *legal* enforceability of this ruling outside of Canada, that is a whole different story. But it's pretty clear this has been a long time coming: Applying regional or national laws to the Internet was always going to be mostly unworkable. However, the following are increasing rapidly: Legal and regulatory problems on the Internet involving e-commerce, privacy problems, cybercrime and cyberwarfare. The need to deal with these problems is also increasing and IMHO it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. There are no easy solutions.