Just to play devil's advocate: Isn't the end result basically the same, though? The commercial entities in the US ultimately took the content down. They may or may not have had to, technically/legally, but the fact remains that they did.

That companies obeyed this "request" from the government only empowers the government further - and as soon as someone eventually pushes back against this kind of thing, a law or technicality will be found making such push-back illegal because, hey, they used to get away with these requests all the time and it totally must have been making the country safer! We wouldn't want to give that important national security power up! Let's make it official! And then boom - we're just like China.