Say, I'm the provider... well sorry, you (the customer) are doing business with a foreign country (mine) and you should do it in accordance with YOUR laws about YOUR country's foreign trade.
That's the only way to properly conform to jurisdiction, amirite?
In other words, UK has no jurisdiction over US businesses who conduct business from US soil, UK cannot force them to obey UK law just because a UK citizen decided to buy something over the internet. The UK can punish THEIR citizens for what the UK considers unlawful trades and that's always the case no matter what.
Claiming jurisdiction over foreign businesses ends up in a completely lunatic situation where every business, in every country, has to obey the laws of every other country just because some people might decide to order from abroad. Block, ban, punish only where you have jurisdiction, everything else ends up in sheer insanity.
of course defining what “US” business is might be quite challenging, is Apple a US company?! They make nothing in the US and pay no taxes in the US … love this idea though!
Because there are laws for US businesses over which the US government has jurisdiction.
> just punish the consumers/citizens and be done with it.
That happens too, when consumers break the laws that apply to them. In the case of international transactions, the law has to account for the pesky jurisdiction:
It's nothing new, when travelers/consumers go through the customs, THEY are responsible for the goods they import, NOT the party that sold those goods to them! That's the only sane way to do it and it's an established practice, there's no reason to do it differently when a consumer imports something using the internet!
> of course defining what “US” business is might be quite challenging, is Apple a US company?!
Yes it is, also, Apple's branches in other countries are companies under the jurisdiction of those other countries. It's not that complicated.
No, you're not? It's pretty obvious that if you try to, say, sell illegal drugs to my citizens, I as a country will come after you even if it's legal on your side.
The internet blurred the lines because you don't "show up" in the buyer's country but there's nothing new here: both seller and buyer need to respect the law.
but why we have laws at all? if the US business can do whatever the F they want in UK why not in US too?
If party A and B are interacting in jurisdictions A and B, which party has to abide by which jurisdiction's laws?
Is the consumer moving into the producer's jurisdiction or is the producer moving into the consumer's jurisdiction?
Laws tend to apply more to the business than the consumer around the world and it's probably fair that this remains to be true, but really it is a hard problem when to parties separated by a border are just sending messages back and forth and you're trying to figure out who has to follow which laws.