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Yes, this is really so. I can even confirm this is the case in Europe, as I once lived in the EU and paid import duties myself on something I imported from America.

In the case of Project Gutenberg and Telegram, the German side is the consumer, so it's entirely comparable. If the app or website is illegal in Germany, Germans who use it are the ones breaking the law here.

If I sell chocolates in America, and somebody in Germany where I have zero presence buys them, I should not expect to get arrested if I step foot on German soil because I used an ingredient banned in Germany. If I run a blog in America, and somebody in Germany comments 'Heil Hitler', I should not expect to get arrested if I have a layover flight in Berlin because I didn't delete that comment. To say otherwise is absolutely deranged. Germany can sieze my chocolates in customs - that's fine. They can block my blog - that's also fine. Your implications here are in utter contradiction to existing international law concerning the import and export of goods.

I challenge you to consider how it could be any other way - if the onus is on the other side, why stop at the website operator for not blocking Germans from their site? Is the host not also responsible? The ISP? Should FedEx be responsible for not inspecting their packages for illegal chocolates?

You you didn't understand and I would like to try again, put bluntly: things don't teleport or cross borders by themselves, so someone is always operating in mutiple jurisdictions and can be prosecuted in more the one, traditionally for physical goods it's usually the importer who buys stuff in a place (and can be prosecuted for that if it's something illegal to buy in the origin country), and sell it in another (and can be prosecuted for that if it's something illegal to sell/own/eat/whatever in the destination country), off course the original seller in the origin country or the final buyer in the destination country can also be prosecuted in theirs respectively jurisdictions as well... Now for some online services like chat apps and whatnot there's no such middle man, people in Germany are only able to use telegram because telegram is directly providing the service for them, so if keeping some text online/acessible to people in Germany is illegal the government will go after the person/group responsible for that, in this case telegram to fine/whatever, they even usually provide guidance in cases like this (like "hey providing this kinda stuff over here is illegal, fix your service - delete the content, make it not available to people here/etc - before we have to go to court"), if writing such text is also illegal whoever did it is also in trouble.

> Now for some online services like chat apps and whatnot there's no such middle man

There are plenty of middlemen. There are the hosting services. There are the ISPs. There are the CDNs. If you're going to make Telegram legally liable for these matters, then why not AWS, ISPs, and CDNs?

I can't reply the other one but you truly are grasping for straws, in your exemple you coud get convicted in the origin country if buying was illegal, for importing and for owing/using it in the destination country if those were offences. That's exactly what is going on here, there's no middle man providing the telegram service for people in Germany so if hosting/providing that service is illegal (because telegram allows pro-nazi stuff or whatever) who else but telegram will be held responsible? They are the ones operating in Germany providing the chat/group message thing, if there were a middleman (like it happens with games in some cases) the court would be talking to them, just like happens (traditionally) with importers.

If Telegram is illegal to use in Germany and it has no presence in Germany, its users in Germany are the ones breaking the law. To act as if Telegram faces criminal liability for simply not blocking Germany is as asinine as acting as if an exporter faces criminal liability in the destination country when they have zero presence there.

The middle man I'm talking about is the one operating in mutiple jurisdictions, so that the "true" seller or buyer doesn't have to (like a importer usually works, buy stuff in a place and brings it to another), what you are talking about is like the shipping company, storage facility owner that rents it out to the importer and stuff like that and those people do get in trouble if they try to get in the middle of the investigation (it would be the same if eg aws did not comply with a judge order of providing the name of who is operating a site so they can get a notice about the illegal stuff they are hosting/providing to users in Germany).

I wasn't the middleman when I imported the product. I was the end user. I have also imported products into the US where I was the end user. Complying with American law and European law was my responsibility in both cases, not that of the seller.

And that's the thing by definition it is literally impossible to be an exporter to country X without operating there. In the same way it is literally impossible to claim that telegram is not providing a service for people in Germany if people in Germany a literally using the service as provided by telegram. You want to have our cake and eat it too, the world simply doesn't work like that.

The way import/export laws work, it's the onus of the importer to comply with the law. I don't understand why you expect a completely different set of rules to be reasonable just because the Internet is involved.