[marknutter]

So how exactly do you not do business in Germany if you're a website like Facebook? Do you just cancel all the accounts of people who listed their home country as Germany? What about people who were born in Germany but don't live there anymore? If I'm visiting Germany, will Facebook not work for me? And how exactly will Germany's public respond if they simply block them from using their service? I would wager people would be fairly upset.

[darklajid]

Your point could be equally made about the real name policy.

How exactly do you enforce this policy? Do you just delete all people with 'wrong' names? What about people that changed their name (marriage, legal change of name) and didn't update the site?

If you'd block Germany, I'd guess there'd be a quick replacement ready (we had FB clones in the past. They are barren and empty because FB won, but I'm pretty sure that most people would Just Move On (TM). I don't expect riots over Facebook and Farmville).

[marknutter]

But Facebook doesn't enforce their real name policy. And I don't think they need to. Most people willingly give their real names if you make that the only option for signing up for the service.

If you block Germany it's tantamount to censorship. Perhaps people in Germany are less concerned about censorship than we are here in the States, but I'd have to imagine it would roughly at least some feathers.

[darklajid]

I - fail to follow.

You don't see a reason to enforce the real name policy, but are opposed to a ruling/request to be explicit about that?

Censorship is always a tough subject. For one, because I actually think that 'free speech' in the US sense doesn't apply locally (there are quite some things you cannot state/show/do and I tend to like that. But I wouldn't consider myself pro-censorship. On the contrary, even).

Ignoring that: Why is 'blocking German users from using the service' censorship and evil, but 'blocking everyone from using a name that they'd like to use, potentially locking/deleting their account after requesting people to hand out official, government provided IDs to a random company on the internet' not censorship?

For me? Same thing. In both cases it's the company that acts and blocks/"censors" a number of potential users.

[jeltz]

One thing you can do is not starting a German subsidiary like Facebook has done. That removes any excuse of being a foreign internet based company.

[div]

Content sites like Hulu, Netflix, Youtube seem to have no problem restricting access based on ip.

This isn't 100%, but it would effectively block everyone in my family except me.