We should not be surprised to learn that there are no easy answers and, in fact, as France's Yahoo decision illustrates, the questions are becoming increasingly complex. The prospect of facing multiple regulators around the world, each attempting to hold publishers and users to different standards on everything from content restrictions to privacy, could chill communication and slow the Internet's global penetration. Web content to the lowest common denominator. Not only is that a certain recipe for something bland, it's not exactly clear what the low-water mark is when one s measure is based on every country in the world. On that scale, the lowest common denominator could very well be silence.
Governments have all sorts of ways to coerce legal compliance.
That only raises another question, but it frames the issue a little better. As we already know, jurisdiction is a court's power to entertain and dispose of a suit. If a court doesn't have jurisdiction over you, the inquiry ends, and the case stops right there. Important rights may ride on making the right call about whether to show up, stay home, or file a suit of your own in a more favorable place. Click-wrap agreements almost always have some provision asking your consent to sue or be sued only in the place where the company you're buying something from is located.