The author is presenting a false dilemma viz. their three reported options (1. IP level restrictions, 2. Citizenship based restrictions, 3. Union of legal syste

The author is presenting a false dilemma viz. their three reported options (1. IP level restrictions, 2. Citizenship based restrictions, 3. Union of legal systems): - We can't just ignore the fact that the internet is a global technology but jurisdictions are regionally restricted. This is a tension, of course, but to just throw up the hands in the air and conclude that, therefore, the internet should be a wholly unregulated space is not an option and not a single nation will allow that eventually. - It is not necessary that the whole of the internet abide by one of these mechanisms, different things can be regulated in different ways, and "mixtures" of the systems are conceivable. - The fact that proposed regulations have edge cases is not something that makes regulation impossible. That seems to be a very engineer-like mindset, but in truth, the law is quite good when it comes to integrating competing interests and principles or do decide that at some point, something is "good enough". Otherwise no laws would ever be written. - IP based restrictions do not become ineffective automatically because VPNs exist. This is proven by the fact that geoblocking works reasonably well on streaming services etc. VPNs are often blocked and, even when not, many people are not technically competent enough to set one up. Of course, it depends on what we want to use IP based restrictions for. If we're targeting criminals (or dissidents), that's probably not a viable solution, but if it's about blocking certain content to certain users then it should work reasonably well. NB: I'm not arguing in favour of geoblocking, it's a stupid thing that should disappear, but the point is solely that it works reasonably well for lots of users. - Finding some sort of common ground between different jurisdictions is something that is necessary in many areas of life which is why trade agreements etc. exist. If the EU pushing GDPR means that Facebook et al. need to adopt better practices wrt. privacy across the globe (because it's too difficult to determine whether a user is EU-based or not), then I guess that's gonna be the price they have to pay to operate in the EU. If the price for operating in China is, nobody is able to talk critically about China anymore, then the response should be "well I guess we won't be operating in China, then" (or, failing that, this should become something that would make western users abandon the network, or even better, something that other countries would take issue with, forcing the service to actually have to take a stand on this).