[kmeisthax]

Sssh! If you tell foreign courts and litigants about VPNs, they'll stop accepting "we'll block it in your country if you get off our backs" and start demanding international jurisdiction.

At that point "it's legal in my country" will no longer suffice for anything online (which is basically everything). Everyone will need to be in compliance with the most restrictive subset of the law. Just in the realm of copyright, the public domain would be dramatically curtailed. All you would need is one rich country with strong legal ties to other nations and an appetite for perpetual copyright, and you would have a judgment mill by which you can make using any public domain content extremely risky.

The current status quo of country-by-country blocking may seem silly to people who know how to evade those blocks, but it makes courts happy and walls off the worst effects of copyright maximalism.

[myohmy]

Hell will freeze over before we get an international court.

The US literally has a law on the books to invade the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands if GWB is ever held trial for war crimes (wars of aggression have been a war crime since the end of WW2).

[kmeisthax]

I'm not sure that's relevant, since the Hague Invasion Act[0] only applies to war crimes. There's all sorts of other cases in which the US is perfectly happy with other countries asserting jurisdiction over it's own citizens. The US has signed plenty of extradition treaties that allow other countries access to US citizens who commit acts which are crimes in both jurisdictions[1].

Furthermore, copyright is usually treated as a civil tort; and the US also has processes to domesticate and enforce foreign court orders under US jurisdiction should someone decide to play scofflaw. There's plenty of international cooperation that makes the whole concept of "jurisdiction ends at national borders" null and void.

[0] Not the real name of the act, but this is funnier.

[1] If you're curious, there are countries that object to criminal extradition. Notably, France considers French nationality to constitute immunity to any extradition treaty it signs. Though, they haven't promised to invade countries over it like the US did.

[wbl]

The US does not enforce foreign libel judgements unless US courts would reach the same conclusions.

[ren_engineer]

>The US literally has a law on the books

laws can change, I'd personally love to see some of our politicians and military leadership get punished for lying to the American people and the damage they did to entire nations around the world. A lot of people my age feel the same, some of these people better hope they croak before a younger generation can hold them accountable

[consumer451]

While extremely significant, I don't think that's the only reason. It is possibly even worse and the blame sometimes even falls outside of US borders.

We live in a world largely run by multinational corporations who would prefer to continue operating in a world devoid of multinational jurisprudence.

[winstonewert]

Where can I read more about this?

[hutzlibu]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Internat...

"In 2002, the U.S. Congress passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act (ASPA), which contained a number of provisions, including authorization of the President to "use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court""

[vimacs2]

As if anyone needed even more incentive to execute war criminals like pigs in a slaughter house.