The US does do that kind of thing though. As a dev, break some law, step foot in the US for a conference, get arrested (ex: Sklyarov 2001 case, for breaking PDF encryption).
Although for most financial things, it's common in US/CA to block non-local IPs. Heck, I was in Mexico and I couldn't login to my provincial government tax portal. There are constant security issues with those sites.
They can tell whatever they want, but it would need to be a US court (in that case) who would do the litigation. Which they won't.
> The US does do that kind of thing though. As a dev, break some law, step foot in the US for a conference, get arrested
yes, this is why I mentioned that my point is only for local businesses. Travel or business in the EU can/will be problematic.
> Heck, I was in Mexico and I couldn't login to my provincial government tax portal. There are constant security issues with those sites.
Blocking for security is another thing. Maybe a good idea, maybe not - but that's another story.
That's a pretty incomplete view of how jurisdiction works. You do probably need a US court ruling to enforce a claim against a US entity – but if that entity has any EU subsidiaries or assets, you can bet that European courts will come after those.
> Blocking for security is another thing. Maybe a good idea, maybe not - but that's another story.
As a customer/taxpayer that needs access to a service from abroad, I really don't care why I have to jump through hoops to cancel a subscription/order or pay my taxes owed.
I am not sure you read my post in details - I explicitly mentioned that I am talking about local services, without any international footprint. And mentioned that in case of this footprint - yes, they will be sought after.
This is also exactly waht the US does to enforce their "extraterritoriality"
And they can be enforced not only from assets, but also from travel or various financial tools at their disposal. (it would be surprising, but for many businesses, it's not worth the hassle)
The golden days of global network accessibility are closing little by little.
If I was issued a fine by the US, China, India or Japan it would directly go to the trashbin. It is their law, and their problem, not mine.
Of course this means that I will not be able to do business there, if I travel I may be in trouble etc. But again - we are talking about small local newspapers (and similar businesses).
A. [re-]architect in in GDPR compliance;
B. deal with incoming legal documents, likely can't just discard;
C. block country representing tiny share of viewership,
option C seems to present the least hassle
Not sure whether C or D would be more complicated long term (you need to manage the geoloc somehow, or outsource and pay for the service)
Exactly, except that it is just simpler to do nothing.
Do you (I assume you are not in either of the countries I give an examples, nor travel there) worry about laws in, say, China when you state "Taiwan is an independent country", or Russia when you say "Russia invaded Ukraine", or North Korea when you say "NK is a tyranny", or France when you say "Retirement should be at 60 and not 64". No. Because the local laws that forbid these statements are, well, local. Nobody cares outside of these countries. They could send you letters informing that you did wrong and that you have to pay 1M USD and you would just put that to trash.
> I guess my question to you is why do YOU care if they're accessible or not? If a (local) business really just wants to sell within their own (local) country (or even smaller municipality such as state/county/city), is there something wrong with blocking everything outside it out and just not worrying about it?
I do not care - it is just that I ended serendipitously on a few of these places and was wondering why they care (I would not care about the cookie law in Zimbabwe or Patagonia if I had a web site).
> They could send you letters informing that you did wrong and that you have to pay 1M USD and you would just put that to trash.
I think it's just better to not get those letters in the first place (any more than spam phone calls or texts) and have to waste time reading them, or having to possibly consult an attorney over them to see if they have merit. It's just not something I want to be bothered with, nor should I. It has nothing to do with the company, what we do or our customers.
> Do you (I assume you are not in either of the countries I give an examples, nor travel there) worry about laws in, say, China when you state "Taiwan is an independent country", or Russia when you say "Russia invaded Ukraine", or North Korea when you say "NK is a tyranny", or France when you say "Retirement should be at 60 and not 64".
We don't say anything like that on our company sites.
Not that I disagree with you on the 'it seems stupid' front. But that doesn't change the risk profile for the company.
I am French. What I find fascinating is that there are local US newspapers (that server a tiny community) that went through the effort to do a geoblock from the EU and put a page along the lines "we cannot be compliant to Privacy laws in the EU so we must block you".
Why do they care at all? How is the EU law relevant to their small, local business?
Large companies are different - there could be some litigation against their footprint in the EU etc. - but for thosewho just live in the US (or anywhere outside the EU) going the extra mile to block because of non compliance is really weird.