You shouldn't 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. The worst solution, of course, is to try to pitch your 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 your 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.
Now, I know that only raises another question, but it frames the issue a little better. Interstate Compliance Jurisdiction is a court's power to make a judgment about what should or shouldn't happen to you. If a court doesn't have jurisdiction over you, the inquiry ends, and the case stops right there. As it's defined in this country, jurisdiction is largely based on concepts of fairness. Specifically, a court asks whether it would be fundamentally fair to haul you into court in the city in which the court is located given the particular set of facts before it.