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Comment by tmaly | Hacker News Reader

It seems like we need two things. First, some type of universal standard to id the country of legal residence of a user. Second, some type of way to know what laws a company needs to comply with to operate in a jurisdiction.

There are too many laws across different jurisdictions that makes it really challenging for companies to offer goods and services.

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We need exactly the opposite: it should be impossible to determine the location of an Internet user. The fact that a user's IP address generally reveals their country is a massive flaw in the design of the Internet.

The only way to circumvent jurisdiction-specific laws is to make them impossible to enforce.

I'm not sure if this solves it exactly? If MasterCard says they'll cut you off unless you adopt their requirements it doesn't really help to say you'll apply that policy in X country and keep selling the stuff in another country, they could still cut you off unless you do it globally.

The entire point is that this has nothing about complying with laws. It’s an entirely arbitrary, extrajudicial power.

Are you sure you want an internet where it's not possible to go escape legal censorship? Because that's what you're proposing with an id standard.

How would that apply to this? It's not about a law. They aren't even demanding better age verification, they want to be able to force arbitrary things to be removed entirely (starting with more objectionable topics, but I'm sure it will expand).

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