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Comment by TruthElixirX | Hacker News Reader

>His website was accessible in the US by design (one could forbid US visitors in the ToS, and by geoip), and the "harm" from his supposed crime occurred, for those US users, in the US, not inside his server.

No one should have to concern themselves with the laws of every nation on Earth when building a website. There is usually not enough time in your life to consider the laws from only your home country.

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Indeed. International copyright law needs revising - but I don't think we'll all be agreeing on anything soon, especially after the whole SOPA debacle.

If you run a dubious website, your only option is to block all countries other than your own, and provide a notice to that effect.

Is it silly? I dont know. It's hard to argue that you have the right to interact with a country's inhabitants but that the country cannot govern those interactions. Though the governing needs to be fair...

Where does the government derive authority to govern interactions where only half take place inside their borders?

Easy: half of it took place within their borders. When you interact with other countries you do so on their terms, because they are sovereign.

Of course, if a crime is only half-committed in one country, then it is also only half-committed in the other country (presuming it is a crime in both). So either of the countries must be free to prosecute.

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