[tmottabr]

i disagree completely on this..

If you are serving people in Iran or France then you are operating in those countries regardless of where you or your servers are and so you do have to comply with their laws or risk facing the consequences.

Now, depending on where you are at the reach of the consequences can be negligible and not impact you at all or can be a major problem.

At minimum you will get your service banned in those countries.

[Ajedi32]

In this example everything is happening on U.S. servers, with U.S. employees, on U.S. soil. How is that "operating in" Iran or France?

If someone physically flew over from Iran and talked to me in-person instead of over the internet would you make the same argument? That I'm "operating in Iran" and should be subject to Iranian law because I'm talking to an Iranian citizen? What if it was via a letter? How about a phone call?