It's certainly not a recent development to require compliance with law even for products or services that are free.
Transactions do not have to involve money and in fact, the very topic of this entry on HN is about a website that was free, with transactions that did not involve money.
Really? If it's a currently established practice, what are some prior examples of countries punishing foreigners on foreign soil over websites with no payments component?
Maybe each jurisdiction should be the business of regulating locally-accessible websites, not just locally-hosted ones, but that's a fundamental shift in the nature of the internet. "Not available in your country" is currently an anachronism. In that world, a prudent web publisher would start out local and enable specific countries for cross-border traffic only as its legal team expands. Internet communities like this one would splinter as people get tired of clicking links they can't follow.
The countries currently regulating available web content do so with network blocks, not extraterritorial enforcement actions against publishers.
The end of the sentence was "not a recent development to require compliance with law even for products or services that are free".
Free doesn't mean you are exempt from complying with law, that is all I'm saying. I did not comment on how this one applies to EU citizens even for foreign services.
In this regard though, it is similar to US law requiring foreign banks to go through special steps when they are dealing with US citizens so that's not anything new either. Money being involved or not in my opinion is not really significant (I actually think that private data is more important and needs more protection than money) but that was not the point of my comment.
Transactions do not have to involve money and in fact, the very topic of this entry on HN is about a website that was free, with transactions that did not involve money.