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Comment by Xylakant | Hacker News Reader

> law that extends the copyright length to 2100 years, creating court orders for the 1 billion people who own a Bible or other old text without paying license fees, and collecting all the money in the world?

Generally speaking: Nothing. Practically speaking: Impossibility to enforce unless you’re a major power. Look how american laws often get enforced world wide while North Korean law doesn’t practically matter.

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This is a sincere question. What American laws are enforced outside the US?

as a first example that pops up in my head, google for Kim Dotcom

DMCA, computer fraud have been and are used to extradite non-US citizens to put them in front of a US court for crimes under US law. Regardless of it being a crime in the country where the suspect lives/did the hack.

I feel if the countries of the parties involved were reversed, it would be a much different situation. Although the content could be hosted in Germany, and aimed at a German audience, other parts of your infrastructure (e.g. domain names, SSL certificates, CDNs) are most likely controlled by US companies, so you do not have much choice in whether you follow US law.

FACTA, the dreaded E-8BEN form that I get to fill in every time I happen to have a US customer, copyright, see Kim Dotcom, access to emails stored by Microsoft Europe (though MS is fighting that).

Honestly, laws have always been enforced internationally, that’s why extradition treaties exist. The internet just makes it much much simpler to commit a crime on foreign soil.

It's pretty common for US copyright law to be enforced outside in the EU as the term can be longer (the US term can occasionally be longer if the author died at the correct time).

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