[irtigor]

Or they didn't have a parent company with even more economic presence than just them (serving American-centric news with ads), but they would like to have that path still easily open in the future, after all its a big market and... that's the point. Off course you can literally ignore all legal requests for compliance from all foregein countries until they do the worst that they can legally do to you which isn't much if you truly have no particularly strong personal or business related interest in them (lose users that you didn't care to have in the first place, cut a travel destination off your list because if you show up you can be held in prison for not paying a fine... Or whatever), but telegram is not you and apparently they care about being able to continue do business there (allowing people in Germany to use the chat app), so not complying is not a option.

[mannerheim]

Should Belarus be allowed to arrest a blogger who enters their airspace because somebody else made a critical comment about Lukashenko on their blog?

[irtigor]

"Should" has no place in what I'm trying to explain to you. I have never said laws are always fair or anything like it. The point is that you can't have your cake and eat it too, by saying "but my servers are in the usa, just like the physical office", "but it is truly impossible to stop every German user to use my site" and stuff like that you will only sound extremely naive, what they (you or anybody) can do is ignore the request to comply with foregein law and suffer the consequences (be blocked there and/or several others) or comply with the foreign law and that doesn't mean necessarily removing the content (focusing in this case), they can opt to make a honest attempt at blocking Germany users from using the app (leave the German market).

[mannerheim]

If the consequence is blocking, that's completely acceptable. If the consequence is that I have to comply with the laws of 200 jurisdictions and probably more or otherwise get arrested if I step foot on their soil (or pass through their airspace), that's completely unacceptable.

[irtigor]

Well you always have the option of not doing business in 200 countries, just because the internet made that easier it doesn't mean you must... About consequences for completely ignoring the courts that will depend on what exactly you are being accused of facilitating/doing, who's accusing you... Just as usual.

[mannerheim]

That is asinine. It's not 'doing business' in 200 countries just because I haven't blocked my website everywhere outside of America.

If somebody breaks German law, that's their problem, and this is the convention for matters outside of the Internet, too. US CBP, for instance, doesn't hold the seller responsible for complying with import laws and duties, that's the responsibility of the importer. That's because it would be enormously complex to figure out the laws of every place someone is meant to sell to, whereas the buyer only needs to know the laws of where they live.

[irtigor]

Really? I don't think so, your example doesn't even seem particularly good, the importer is the one operating in two countries and that should know what he can legally buy in one and bring to the other, this is not a particularly new concept, in the same way I don't believe telegram itself would get in trouble if someone from another country entered Germany with the app installed in their phone.