The Internet does not invalidate national sovereignty. I believe this has been a very bad principle in the past, this idea that you can do business in some country, and if it's via the Internet you somehow shouldn't care about their laws. If you accept one connection from a user in some country, you are doing business in that country. And much more uncontroversially, if you are accepting payments from someone in another country, then you are definitely doing business in that country.
Even in tourism there is some level of cross-border law enforcement, especially given international treaties.
So to me it makes sense that a company that wants to take money from (or even to serve content to) people in country A need to respect the laws of country A as a general rule.
Of course, the people of a company should be free to do what they believe is right, such as not upholding unjust laws. The law is not an excuse from moral duties. So I have no problem with companies flouting censorship or even copyright rules. I also don't have a major problem with companies enforcing somewhat benign censorship rules (by taking down content, not by going against individual users), such as imposing certain public decency laws (e.g. no swearing, even no blasphemy) when serving content to countries that prohibit this kind of behavior.
On the other hand, closing down accounts or giving over information about people who have broken those laws to regimes that may punish them brutally should not be taken lightly. You can scrub messages denigrating Mohammed from Saudi Arabian YouTube and that can be argued as respecting the tastes of your Saudi Arabian visitors. But that does not mean that it is also acceptable to report a user that made such a comment to the authorities there, knowing that they may be severely punished. In fact, scrubbing the comments could even help protect the individual who made them from the authorities enforcing the unjust law in that country.
The world is a subtle place and trying to apply simple rules to moral and ethical questions is a fool's errand.
> If you accept one connection from a user in some country, you are doing business in that country.
I disagree with this. I have an open port at 80 and 443 and whoever wants to connect to it can do so. If my server is physically in the US, it only needs to obey US laws. If someone is violating their country's (weird) laws by visiting the server, that's that person's problem.
It's not my job as a developer, website host, or business owner, to for example ink out photos of women because Saudi law requires that. It's not my job to remove references to the Tiananmen incident. Those countries can, if they would like to, censor my website at their borders with a firewall, I don't care. It's not even my job to track down where your IP address is physically located. I couldn't care less about your IP. You could be using a VPN, for all I know.
Iran or China has issues with my website? They'll block it. Problem solved. I don't have to think about it too much. They do the work for me.
EU has beef with my website? Go ahead, you block it too, I don't care. I'll grab some popcorn and sit back and watch how your citizens react. (hee hee)
> And much more uncontroversially, if you are accepting payments from someone in another country, then you are definitely doing business in that country.
I disagree with this, as well, if those payments are coming from individuals and not businesses. If an individual in Germany flies over to the US and buys something from me, they are subject to US laws in that transaction. They are subject to German laws when they take that thing back. But in NO part of the entire process am I subject to German laws.
That doesn't change if "flies with an international flight" changes to "travels virtually via an international TCP connection".
> That doesn't change if "flies with an international flight" changes to "travels virtually via an international TCP connection".
That is not at all clear. In general, the place where I physically stand is the place whoze laws I expect to be affected by, in any transaction. Of course, this is also true of you sitting near your server, so there is a conflict.
Also, I suspect international commerce is more complex than that, and that if there were a conflict between German laws and US laws on the consumer's rights in your example, the German laws might have some power against you (well, probably not with the US specifically).
Even in tourism there is some level of cross-border law enforcement, especially given international treaties.
So to me it makes sense that a company that wants to take money from (or even to serve content to) people in country A need to respect the laws of country A as a general rule.
Of course, the people of a company should be free to do what they believe is right, such as not upholding unjust laws. The law is not an excuse from moral duties. So I have no problem with companies flouting censorship or even copyright rules. I also don't have a major problem with companies enforcing somewhat benign censorship rules (by taking down content, not by going against individual users), such as imposing certain public decency laws (e.g. no swearing, even no blasphemy) when serving content to countries that prohibit this kind of behavior.
On the other hand, closing down accounts or giving over information about people who have broken those laws to regimes that may punish them brutally should not be taken lightly. You can scrub messages denigrating Mohammed from Saudi Arabian YouTube and that can be argued as respecting the tastes of your Saudi Arabian visitors. But that does not mean that it is also acceptable to report a user that made such a comment to the authorities there, knowing that they may be severely punished. In fact, scrubbing the comments could even help protect the individual who made them from the authorities enforcing the unjust law in that country.
The world is a subtle place and trying to apply simple rules to moral and ethical questions is a fool's errand.