Comment by hnfong
9 hours ago
FWIW, this theory was attempted in court with a bittorrent case in Hong Kong. [1]
Defendant's lawyer argued that seeding a copyrighted movie was not (active) distribution but merely "making it available" (which was not associated with a criminal offense in HK law as opposed to "distributing infringing copies").
Didn't work out.
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[1] HKSAR v Chan Nai Ming [2005] 4 HKLRD 142
This is someone in HK judged under HK jurisdiction. That's fine.
My point is it's weird to expect website operators to be aware of every jurisdiction on the planet and take steps to comply with each of them.
If that expectation becomes common, the obvious way to go isn't to block the countries you aren't allowed to serve. It's to only allow the ones you know you are allowed.
Imagine how the internet would be if you were default blocked from accessing any website hosted in a different country.
> Imagine how the internet would be if you were default blocked from accessing any website hosted in a different country.
It's a difficult issue for sure. It's almost a geopolitical problem -- the larger economic blocs (eg. EU, China, USA) can basically dictate terms and expect general compliance (eg. GDPR) because most companies can't avoid operating in those areas, while smaller countries can't really do much unless they're part of a bigger economic bloc.