In one of your previous posts, you explicitly mentioned that companies can protect their users and fight authorities (unless the claim was based in the name of national security). In those cases, where Proton gave authorities personal data of users, national security wasn't even in the question. It was just a typical court order which they can easily fight like Apple and Cloudflare do.
They claim they are a privacy company and brag how they keep no logs, then court order comes and suddenly they have the data and pass it to the court.
The real privacy company would fight in court.
A company cannot "fight" a court order, in the same sense as defending themselves against charges in court. The burden of proof is on the company to prove its innocence or that the court order is invalid. However, most companies don't do that - because they have no intention of cooperating in the first place - which is contempt. They must comply. If they do not comply, then they can be found in contempt of court. If found in contempt, anything from serious fines to the imprisonment of a executives can happen. It is up to the judge to decide, based upon the arguments and pressure applied by plaintiff's counsel or prosecutors. There is no such thing as anybody or any company "fighting a court order" when there is clear evidence or probable cause to support the judge's decision to issue the court order.
There are two types of contempt: civil and criminal.
It is up to the prosecutor or plaintiff to decide if they want to spend the time, effort, and money to pursue further sanctions against anybody or any company that does not cooperate with a court order. To go through the process - which can be very expensive - to ultimately get the judge to severely punish the entity that ignores or does not cooperate. This is how it works in the U.S. and all British Commonwealth nations, and generally in all European, Australian, and Japanese legal systems. The court order cooperation process is very generous and allows the party required to comply with the court order many opportunities to do so. Where the system fails in many nations is that the plaintiff or the prosecutors just allow the party in contempt to get away with it. It isn't non-enforcement. It is non-pursuit.
Providing "privacy" does not mean breaking laws to protect user data. Proton has always been presented with legal requests for user data issued by the Swiss legal systems (judges) or completely legitimate legal investigative requests made by the Swiss government, its security services, or Swiss federal or local law enforcement.
There has never been a "fishing expedition" request made to ANY VPN in the world. They have all been legal and above board, created and submitted properly through national legal systems. It is not the duty of any company to violate any law or ignore any court order or other legal request "to protect users." Nor will any company owner or executive spend millions of Euros to safeguard "User Privacy."
"Privacy" that is marketed by any company is notional and never meant, intended, or designed to risk or imperil the company itself or its employees. "Privacy" marketed by companies does not mean that they will go to any lengths to keep any user anonymous, nor should any user ever expect them to.
You are just one of those types of people that thinks you should be able to steal content, pirate software, and expect companies to not cooperate with law enforcement when it makes a request to unmask you for your criminal activities. You've publicly stated as much multiple times here on this forum.
What you want VPNs and other companies to do is the type of under-handed activities of services offered on the Dark Web - of being unwilling to cooperate with lawful requests of user data. A lawful request is a lawful request. It does not matter if you disagree with it. If you are law-abiding, then you comply. If you do not comply, then you're a criminal.
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