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No, a country has sovereignty on its territory and can do whatever they want, including blocking whatever websites they want and not giving a crap about whom th

No, a country has sovereignty on its territory and can do whatever they want, including blocking whatever websites they want and not giving a crap about whom they offend. This is why you need to follow the law in the countries wher the service is operational, otherwise the service risks being blocked at the very least. Of course, countries have trade agreements and the circumstances under which services and products can be blocked is negotiable. And this can cut both ways, e.g. companies in the US selling services and products in the EU have to be lawful in the EU, otherwise they can be fined, even without a presence in the EU. This is why most US companies selling their services in the EU have started charging VAT, even if the US has no such thing. As to your remark, a website can be at the same time legal in one country and illegal in another. What can happen next depends on the country you’re talking about and the trade agreements that are in place. But generally, when we’re talking about avoiding payments and taxes, you’d better live in a country with no extradition agreements.

AdrianB1 8y ago
It is not about sovereignty, it is about jurisdiction. If a site on Internet in a different country is upsetting you, you cannot simply shut it down just because you can convince a judge to do it. The law in your country does not apply to the site in a different country. In the same way, you completely misunderstood how VAT works: when you sell something in EU you collect VAT, but only when the buyer is there and only if you have any presence as a seller in EU. If a EU citizen buys something in Wallmart in New York, Wallmart is paying no VAT.
- bad_user 8y ago
  > you cannot simply shut it down Indeed, but you can block it. And speaking of big organizations like Mozilla or Google, they have to comply with the laws of the countries they operate in. Meaning that they need to block browser extensions in the countries in which they are unlawful and they received a take down request. So in this case Mozilla would need to block extensions based on jurisdiction. For which they'd need to track their user's location while they are using said extensions, like various websites or game platforms are doing, but which for Mozilla would be a privacy nightmare. What would you rather have? A browser that tracks extension usage in real time, or a browser that bans those extensions from their repository? At the very least the easier path is the later.

AdrianB1 8y ago

It is not about sovereignty, it is about jurisdiction. If a site on Internet in a different country is upsetting you, you cannot simply shut it down just because you can convince a judge to do it. The law in your country does not apply to the site in a different country. In the same way, you completely misunderstood how VAT works: when you sell something in EU you collect VAT, but only when the buyer is there and only if you have any presence as a seller in EU. If a EU citizen buys something in Wallmart in New York, Wallmart is paying no VAT.

bad_user 8y ago
> you cannot simply shut it down Indeed, but you can block it. And speaking of big organizations like Mozilla or Google, they have to comply with the laws of the countries they operate in. Meaning that they need to block browser extensions in the countries in which they are unlawful and they received a take down request. So in this case Mozilla would need to block extensions based on jurisdiction. For which they'd need to track their user's location while they are using said extensions, like various websites or game platforms are doing, but which for Mozilla would be a privacy nightmare. What would you rather have? A browser that tracks extension usage in real time, or a browser that bans those extensions from their repository? At the very least the easier path is the later.