>Unless someone can point to an American (Japanese/Australian/Canadian/Korean/Mexican/Chinese/Indian etc etc) law passed promising equivalence this continued notion that the EU laws are global is really weird.

Extraterritorial jurisdiction isn't a new or unusual concept in the slightest, and I don't understand the recent trend of pretending that it's only the EU does this. The classic examples of money laundering, organised crime, sexual crimes committed against children, female genital mutilation, anti-competitive laws, etc, are so mainstream at this point that I don't think any Westerner would consider it controversial for somebody who does these acts in countries where they are less regulated to be arrested for them upon arriving in a Western country.

There's also more HN specific examples like cybercrime, with a recent example being the arrest of Marcus Hutchins. Or copyright, where anybody from countries with less strict copyright laws from the US knows what I'm talking about. Japan has strict copyright laws too, and game companies like Sega and Nintendo are notoriously protective of their IP to the point where Sega has apologised for abusing the DMCA to take down videos produced by North American and European nationals. COPPA predates the GDPR by 15 years and is applicable everywhere. The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation regulates sending spam to Canadians. The German NetzDG will send you a strongly worded letter if you criticise Germans.

Many data protection laws also regulate how you handle data of their nationals. For example, the data protection laws India introduced in 2011, applicable to businesses that outsource operations to India, were described as much more restrictive than the EU or US counterparts. China regulates that foreign businesses doing business in China store all their data in China. South Korea has no scope on territory for their PIPA, but it's hard to tell if this applied to their 2011 legislation or just their 2020 legislation as these laws obviously aren't in English. Many newer laws are modelled after the GDPR and also have no scope on territory, e.g., Brazil, California, Russia, etc.

There's other more general examples too. Many countries criminalise taking drugs, and evidence that you've taken drugs in the past can lead to you being deported. Consumer protection laws are generally pretty strong and banks will side with consumers in issuing charge backs. Anecdotally, Steam had a no refund policy for the longest time and support staff would berate you for asking for a refund for a game that doesn't work, but they still issued refunds and now have a refund policy (even if it doesn't fully comply with local laws). America regulates exporting arms, which caused a lot of drama in the Linux scene in the early 2000s when encryption was (still is?) considered munition. Doing commerce with embargoed or sanctioned countries can land you in hot water too, it might make sense for 'bad guy' countries like China, Russia, Iran, etc, but the US and Israel stand alone in defending the embargo on Cuba. Many countries have restrictions on freedom of speech, it might not be the best idea to travel to Turkey if you publicly criticise Erdoğan. Etc.

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None of this is to say that I agree with what the EU is doing, or that these examples are 1:1 parallels, but I think the attitude of 'these laws don't/shouldn't affect me' is naive at best, unless you plan on never leaving or doing business outside of your own country.