[Zak]

It seems to me there are three possible ways law on the internet can work, to include ill-defined hybrids between them. Please let me know if I've missed any:

1. The law where a service is hosted applies. Entities in other legal jurisdictions may not be allowed to do business with the service (e.g. run ads on it) if it doesn't follow the law where they're located. Cost: people may be able to access content that's illegal where they live.

2. The law where the user is located applies. Anyone putting up a website must familiarize themselves with the laws of 195 countries where users could be and comply with all of them, or at least the ones that have a friendly relationship to the host's country. Service operators must block users from jurisdictions with laws they can't obey. Cost: this is a nightmarish compliance landscape only large companies can deal with; the internet becomes much less global.

3. Countries put up a Great Firewall of X. Cost: the hacker community has traditionally considered censorship bad; the internet becomes much less global.

[zaarn]

If you do business in a country, laws of that country apply to you. Selling apps in that country would count I presume. Part of the threat from the german government was to have GPlay and Apple delete the app from german storefronts.

I don't see how that is much of an issue.

[Zak]

In the case of Telegram, no selling takes place; the app is free.

I can get the Android version from Google's store, which is uncontroversially subject to German law because Google has physical offices and a financial presence in Germany. I can also download it from telegram.org, which to my knowledge does not have a physical or financial presence in Germany.

Germany probably has the legal authority to order Google to stop distributing the Telegram app and can use that authority to pressure Telegram. What remains unresolved is the degree to which Germany can act against Telegram directly.

[zaarn]

Well, it seems very much like Telegram wants to continue being on the German Play Store. And yes, Telegram is very much selling things, even if the price, at the moment is 0$. They're also going into the ad business, if you check their business web presence.

[mannerheim]

The German government has a broader view than just this. See the Project Gutenberg case. PGLAF has zero presence in Germany, yet the German government claimed jurisdiction simply because the website had German-language content.