If you operate in a country you still have to follow that countries laws. Being an 'internet company' doesn't change that.
Now for this specific case, whether Facebook has offices in Germany or if they sell to Germans, I don't know but if any of those are true they may have to abide by by these laws.
Also, no, no company should be allowed to do what it likes.
I have been curious about these things for a while. When is an internet company considered breaking the law, if all they do is put their product online and make it accessible on the internet (i.e. from everywhere)?
Say, a web app X that shows a collections of cat pictures uploaded by the users, and country Y where cat pictures are banned in every media. How does this work?
I can't answer your question completely and I'm by no means a legal expert, but I know that German law states that you have to abide by German laws if you website is targeting visitors/customers living in Germany, even if you aren't German yourself.
Short example: An American hosting a personal WW2 website in the US with a huge German user-base has a good chance of getting in trouble in Germany if he denies the existence of the holocaust on it.
It took quite a while to dig up some facts about this topic, but take a look at http://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/doc... (in German, but can be translated with Google translate). According to that article our BGH thinks that the New York Times has to take down defamatory statements about a German/Spanish resident that went to court in Germany if they don't want to break German law. Further down they even add the fact that the NYT had ~15,000 registered German users back then to solidify the claim that the NYT is targeted at a German audience. IMO this shows that some connection to German residents has to exist for German law to be concerned. From what I know, a German telephone number or offering a German translation of a website might suffice for this connection to be made, too.
On another note: I have not found any case where an extradition to Germany took place, but I have heard of non-internet-cases where people got into trouble when they traveled to Germany.
Most people will respond with "law is law". The more interesting question in my opinion is "should there be laws regulating voluntary agreements". If somebody has a problem with Facebook, they can just not register. Some claim "everybody else has Facebook so I have to use it as well", but if you equate societal pressure to involuntary action, you are opening a can of worms.
> The more interesting question in my opinion is "should there be laws regulating voluntary agreements".
Yes, and they serve important function -- leveling the playing field in case of strong imbalance between the parties.
Consider for example employment -- in many cases, employers have stronger bargaining position against singular employees or candidates, and could strong-arm individuals into one-sided deals. Thus most countries have certain degree of regulation of employment, providing some basic standard for the employment deals.
Having said that, I still can't reconcile with the idea of every website being subject to local laws of every country it is accessed from, merely by the fact that somebody visited the site from within this particular country.
In case of using a website, the active party is the user, and the website operator is the passive party. If anything, local law should bind the users, not the operators.
How about the German government went instead, ``Under penalty of XYZ, citizens ((of Germany)) may not use social networking website which require disclosure of real names as a precondition''? While this apparently puts pressure on users alone, Facebook would have to weight the real-name policy vs. losing a large, country-wide market.
The landlord and tenant relationship is another example, where courts in many jurisdictions will simply strike out many types of clause, whether they were entered into knowingly/willing or not.
But Facebook is not a passive party here. They are actively using your information to market products towards you and your friends, much more so than most sites.
The more interesting question in my opinion is "should there be laws regulating voluntary agreements".
This is the core of the libertarian stance, that there should be no laws that can override voluntary agreements. However this means no minimum wage laws, no employee protection laws, no anti-discrimination laws etc. The outcome of "law can never override contracts" is untenable to me, so yes, I think there should be laws regulating voluntary agreements.
@rmc - not what I said. Regulating privacy, as in ensuring a company doesn't illegally share your personal information after you register, is perfectly fine. But regulating how a user registers up for an opt-in service is completely different. If you don't want to use your real name, choose another social network, that doesn't have this policy.
It sounded in your original comment like you objected to all kinds of regulation of internet companies.
I personally have no strong opinion either way about if there should be a law banning real name policies. Such a law seems a bit silly, but I also see a bit of the point of having it.
