They offer a service to citizens of Germany (via facebook.de) -> subject to German laws. And Facebook has an office in Germany that handles advertising sales, so courts can fine that subsidiary.

Facebook Continues Assault On StudiVZ, Opens Office In Hamburg (February 2010)

Usually, the money is transferred to accounts in eastern Europe opened with stolen or fake identities. The thieves then just withdraw the money in cash, making it pretty hard to track them down.

RTFA: "Costs that are not related to the operating system, such as staff and training costs, were identically listed at around €22 million (£17 million) in all three scenarios. Overall, the project says that Windows and Microsoft Office would have cost just over €34 million (£27 million), while Windows with Open Office would have cost about €30 million (£24 million). The LiMux scenario, on the other hand, has reportedly cost less than €23 million (£18 million)."

"There is a problem with that island. It is an accident waiting to happen."

-- Ian Malcolm, Jurrassic Park

At least with the current state of technology. But wait a few decades and maybe we will all be running around with cyborg enhancements. Won't be quite as much fun if the other player has a more powerful chip in his brain.

I think we already have enough problems with (Neo-)Nazis and right-wing extremists as is in Germany. I don't think German law enforcement agencies are too keen on importing even more of them from other countries...

Isn't that what authority records and VIAF are for?

Why not? Botany Bay sounds like a nice name for our first Mars base.

Except that in Germany too, "think of the children" will get you a lot of people agreeing with your position - whereas mentioning Hitler, the Nazis and the 3rd Reich in a way that could be interpreted as positive or comparing contemporary political figures to Hitler and the Nazis will heavily damage or even end your political career (see Herta Daeubler-Gmelin and others).

Except maybe with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Yep. German courts (just like courts in many other countries) assume that if Germans can access it, it's in their jurisdiction.

That's the status quo. Of course that doesn't mean that foreign courts can always enforce their decisions against corporations, but they can certainly convict the company and ask the country where the company resides to help them via mutual legal assistance treaties (which exist between many western countries).
In theory, an Iranian court could sentence you to death for uploading certain videos to Youtube. And if you plan on visiting far away countries after that, you better make sure those countries that don't have extradition treaties with Iran...

When a fictional universes has been around for a long time, the opinion of the creator becomes less and less important and the stories themselves and the fictional facts therein become more important.

It's the same with the Star Wars Expanded Universe, where many fans desperately wish that Lucas would stop meddling with their SW universe and leave it to the authors and writers who can capture the feel of the universe much better and have a lot more knowledge about what's happening in that world.

I stopped reading at "Swarm of Laser Wielding..." when an image popped into my mind:
A big bad asteroid hurtling towards our little blue planet. Then the camera pans around and we see a huge number of little dots. Flying closer, we see a huge swarm of frickin' space sharks swooping down towards the asteroid, shooting their lasers at it while Bruce Willis, riding the lead shark, yells "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker." I'd pay money to see that.

Uhm...