This is the flaw in the "you have free speech; you just need to build your own social network to exercise it" argument: even when you do that, they still try to censor you.
> In America you play by our rules, we don’t play by yours. Germany is a guest in our community and they will respect our values and way of doing things, not the other way around. I have nothing but love for the German people and they too deserve the fundamental human right to speak freely on the internet.
I think if you're knowingly providing a service to German users, and profiting from them, you should be accountable to the germany government. And the same for any other country. If you dont like it, make at least some effort to stop doing it.
This is the minimum standard the US uses when overseas companies provide services to US citizens (including those not even in the US)...
Other places take differebt approaches to freedom of speech. They're not wrong, they're just different.
Would your stance be the same or different if this were the Chinese government instead of the German government? If the same, do you really think it's a good idea for totalitarian dictatorships to get to force the rest of the world to do their censorship for them? If different, then what part of your argument wouldn't apply to that hypothetical?
Germany doesn't have a tyrannical government, so I'd say "different".
I'd also say, if you're making a profit youre a commercial entity so maybe you should abide by (hypothetical) chinese law. If you're engaged in legitimate free speech (etc) activities, be a non profit and so wriggle out of my definition above :). But you can't have the best of both worlds, at least not in my opinion...
Let me ask you though: would you be happy for a foreign site to provide services illegal in the US to US residents and say "well thats life?". If there were a country that permitted CP would it be "their country, their rules?" even if it was having an impact domestically? The US is very aggressive about going after people abroad how brake US law, even ones that aren't in the US (Assange, Kim Dotcom, etc). Why shouldn't Germany have the same right?
I'd like a one-size fits all approach, or for one country to be absolutely and undeniably correct in their exact legislation of free speech. But no one is. Until then, it's not unreasonable for otherwise reasonable, democratic, countries to say "what you put on the web for everyone, us everyone's concern".
