Not always. For example, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials, even if the practice is accepted or prevalent in a foreign nation.[1] Just because another country has a particular policy does not mean we have to allow our companies to play along.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
Er, no; in every "free" country, trade/export restrictions are still a thing. US corporations can't sell to North Korean citizens, or even Cuban citizens, despite not being in a state of war against either. And "munitions" (e.g. what encryption algorithms used to be) can be traded hardly anywhere. Just call censorship-enabling technologies "munitions" and it neatly solves the problem of who exactly US corporations can give them to.
That regulation is only in place to protect the established players ... and to ensure the CIA decides who gets the weapons.
Nonetheless, among such regulations, designed to make private companies somewhat work for the general public interest, we can include not aiding censorship.
I guess you meant "duty" instead of "right"; and respecting the sovereignty of other nations means they can block any site they like or even internet itself if they desire, but it doesn't mean we have to allow local companies to comply with laws from those countries.
>As you note, private companies are typically free to do as they please in free countries...that's kinda the point.
That's not the point at all; lets put it this way, companies are NOT free to poison the water we drink or even poison the water of other countries drink just because their governments tell them to do so.
This nearly made me cough my lunch over my keyboard.
Countries tend to have the habit of respecting other countries sovereignty right up until they don’t, at which point they will invade and occupy the other. Or carry out a proxy war, etc.
Even that is too generous. Which country of any influence doesn’t at least a few spies getting about doing their spying. Which major players aren’t subverting the course of things in at least a handful of regions at any time.
Except Google isn't in China, and least I heard important events still happen there...the world isn't as FANG centric as western media would want us to believe.
Stands for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, apparently.
> nearly
So you do use it for search.
And two of these companies are probably hosting some of the websites you visit.
Perhaps some of the sites I visit are hosted on Google, but since I stopped visiting reddit (the awful redesign was the last straw), I see very little traffic hitting AWS or GCP IP ranges. Part of that is probably uBlock Origin doing its thing though!
where did you hear about this? :)
Not sure what you mean, I didn't see Napster fighting for censorship nor Craigslist fighting for FOSTA.
How is that a liberal fantasy? I thought the standard liberal belief is in heavy regulation of business?
Or do you mean "liberal" in the general "lots of liberty" sense and not "in the liberal political camp"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_Unite...
This is a difficult bit. There are many different ideas about conflicting rights. Without going into these ongoing debates it is enough to say that liberalism is a big tent philosophy. It encompasses "left wingers" in one end where the state has many responsibilities to uphold individual liberties. At the other end are libertarians who say there is no need for government intervention for individuals to pursue their own ends. People can argue about rights and still be correct in calling themselves liberals.
It is the dominant overarching ideology in America (the American “founding fathers” were mostly devoted liberals) and Western Europe, and there are many disagreements among different sorts of liberals.
Edit for the downvoters: I'm not saying I agree with how Libertarians are seen, just reporting what I've observed. I tend to lean Libertarian on a lot of issues (freedom of movement, freedom of and from religion, live and let live, the right to be left alone, and so on), while also being a socially progressive liberal.