You're not in their "house". You're just communicating with someone who is. If some foreign government has a problem with that communication they should take it up with the party who is physically within their jurisdiction—not that I believe they have any just standing there either.
Why does this magically change when someone utters the words “the internet?”
You are not doing business in another country. First, there may not be any "business" involved at all. More importantly, however, you are not in the other country. The other person is. If physical property is involved then someone—not necessarily you—is going to need to worry about import/export regulations when moving it across the border. When it comes to virtual services and websites, however, those concerns rooted in physical transportation do not apply.
> Why does this magically change when someone utters the words “the internet?”
It makes no difference whether you're communicating over the Internet or by phone or two-way radio or postal mail or carrier pigeon, or by shouting to each other across the border. So long as you're only exchanging data and not physical goods they can implement technical measures to block the communication at the border, or order their own residents not to communicate with you—in which case I would advise them to make arrangements leave the country posthaste—but you yourself remain outside their jurisdiction.
This is something that’s already heavily regulated for other industries e.g. financial services. There’s nothing novel about the GDPR in that aspect.
Services which involve nothing but data, and thus still fall under the category of "data moving over borders". And, consequently, freedom of speech.
May I introduce you to services such as Wikipedia.com and news.ycombinator.com?
Which is literally just data.
> a forum through you can interact with other people
Which is just a means of exchanging data.
What is missing in both cases is any transportation of people or material across the border.
Regardless of whether or not your model actually makes sense, an inevitable consequence of your model is that the internet will become siloed at a national level. It sounds like you’re fine with that though.
In any case, once again it’s irrelevant. Whatever your justification for it, this behavior will lead to internet siloization.
Plenty of countries require you to register for sales tax once you establish a presence in their country, whether you sell goods or services. No business operating in this environment thinks it’s unreasonable to do so. Once again “their house, their rules.”
No, you are confusing sending information with “doing business”.
Why is it unjust when literally the entire U.K. population is in support of this position?
Obviously not "literally the entire U.K. population" if someone in the U.K. isn't following the rule.
This is a complex subject and I'm not going to get into it here, but the Cliff's Notes version is basically that the U.K. government is not a party to this transaction, is not harmed by it, and does not represent (as in: having a formal, revocable agent/principal relationship with) anyone who is either a party to the transaction or harmed by it, and thus has no standing to interfere. The justice or injustice of the matter is unaffected by whether the government's interference would be popular.
Longer version: governments adopt rules based on what works for them and their population. This includes rules that govern what can and can’t be sold in a business transaction. This is a principle as old as government itself. It makes sense that governments then apply these rules to things going in and out of its borders. It would be nuts to ban the sale of guns inside a country but allow them to be sold into the country, for example.
If we're talking about a "business transaction" as in an exchange of physical goods across the border, then I agree. I said that it was unjust, not that it was without precedent. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I believe in the concept of government itself. The core of what government is, and does, is unjust. Arguing that governments have always done things this way carries zero weight with me.
Applying these rules (or any rules) to the non-commercial exchange of information, or even to commercial services involving no exchange of physical property, is the recent, and more immediately concerning, development.
> It would be nuts to ban the sale of guns inside a country…
I agree with you up to that point. But if they want to ban the import of "wireless handheld hold punchers" or any other contraband they should do that at the border, by stopping the shipments—which at that point consist of the buyer inside the country attempting to import their own property after the sale—and not by attempting to impose their internal rules on foreign sellers. Residents could buy them but would have to keep them outside the country, perhaps using them only while visiting the country the goods were in at the time of the sale, or somewhere else where they are legal.
I’m not interested in whether you believe in government or not because that’s debating a fantasy world that simply doesn’t exist.
Whether or not you think it’s correct, the obvious and inevitable conclusion is that the web will be siloed off and cease to be a global network.