Sadly, this is no free country. Not in any respect.

I don't have the time or the tools to look this up now, but wasn't there something that happened with Google, or Yahoo, or maybe even eBay regarding some sort of transaction sort of thing and France... Where France's laws affected the business operations of whichever of those big mucky mucks I mean to say.... ? If this sounds familiar, haha, please let me know. This was last year sometime. It's in my Finance Law notes, I'm sure...

So in that vein, if a law in France could impact a business run in the US, I wonder if a New Jersey law could require a message board or business in California to operate in accordance to their law... For example, do we have any posters from Jersey?

I can remember issues with Ebay and others being banned from selling Nazi memorabilia (kind of an icky term), but that may not be what you are referring to.

I respect the right of all nations to set their laws for businesses to operate. But I also think that if the requirements are immoral - such as GOogle's current dealings with China - that the business should opt not to do business in that country.

Yeah, I'll have to look up what it was all about... That may very well be what I was trying to remember. While I agree that the selling of Nazi memorabilia might be considered morally wrong, a US based business was affected by something that entirely took place somewhere else, by someone else, and they took the flack for it.

Actually, I'm waiting for Prudence's analysis of the situation, I realize...

*waits patiently*

Well, LoT will just have to move their country of residency to Switzerland. Fuc|< that.

Yeah, but the people from New Jersey would still have to post their full names and addresses (at least that's how they make it sound).

Maybe this is a plot to lower the population of New Jersey.

This is where it gets stupid: The law is written such that it's the operator's responsibility to enforce the policy. So does that mean that we, as operators, would be required to maintain that information for anyone posting from New Jersey, even though the law is written in a jurisdiction that does not cover us (I just checked, the servers are located in the Los Angeles area)? Hell no am I dealing with that.

No way NJ can enforce that.

This proposed law is as ridiculous as Louisiana's proposed ban on low-cut jeans.

They did that?

I could be mistaken, but I believe Mousepod is from New Jersey, isn't he? He's no longer, so it's not his fault.;)

Didin't they just ban smoking in strip joints, too?

Oh, I doubt it. The key word there is "proposed," meaning some wacky government-type thought something up, and some reporter wrote a wacky story that ended up on Yahoo's "offbeat news" section.

It was a funny article--it began with the lamentation that poor, poor Britney Spears would need a new wardrobe before returning to her home town in LA for her concert.

The proposed punishment for wearing low-cut jeans was community service--the wacky guy wanted the low-cut jeans girls out picking up trash on the side of the road.

I'm fairly sure that LA never seriously considered such a law, and if they ever did, they've certainly got bigger problems at this point.

The article quoted in the OP of this thread says "proposed" as well.