Wait, shouldn't that be...

Using the Google guidelines for "funny": Loool!

About 19,700,000 o's (0.17 seconds)

And libel laws can prevent publication. But in the internet space, that would still require all companies to implement technological measures that make arbitrary removal of information about their customers possible. In other words, there's no added burden to companies that doesn't already exist from libel laws, but allowing customers to directly request removal from the company would actually save money on unneccessary litigation.

You're broadly right, but you're missing the fact that some of the information about you is gnoing to show up without you having posted it yourself. There might be both true and false statements made by others about you, or even made by others impersonating you. There should be laws that allow you to correct that if you find out, because like you say, in 10 years time that prank statement about you that someone else made will still be around and look like the honest truth.

Altruism works fine and it is not the problem the AC hinted at. The real problem is control. The owners of the highly popular website don't want to lose control of their content by allowing it to be mirrored indiscriminately around the web. Control translates into the mathematical requirement that a node on the web graph receives too many inbound links, and too outbound content transfers.

Take CNN. If they allowed their content to be copied and reposted by anyone on the net on any website, you would see lots of clone sites popping up with CNN content, and the traffic to the original CNN would drop. However, CNN don't want that, so instead they complain about bandwidth bills and CDN bills and you get the meme that a web presence is expensive.

It's all about control. If you want to control tightly your content on the web, then you're shooting yourself in the foot. The web isn't designed for tight content control, it's designed for the opposite: free content distribution and redundancy. Anyone who understands that can use the web at practically no cost.

Take for example the linux distros. They understand perfectly well the advantage of letting mirrors distribute their software. They don't need advertising, or multimillion dollar budgets just to put up a handful of web pages on a server. Same with USENET, which was designed to mirror messages and news stories on local servers for the entire net. The same with wikipedia, if they agreed to allow others to mirror their content, they wouldn't need to ask for donations. In a distributed system, the traffic is spread out and the cost is minimized - and since the backbones have peering agreements, it costs nothing to propagate.

So in the end, if you've got a website idea, think carefully about what you want. If you want control, then you'll have to pay for it. But if you're happy to relax that requirement, then you can make it happen for (essentially) free. The whole making money on the internet thing is quite unnecessary and certainly not important for the internet's survival.

Would you like to trade your "humanity transcends borders" for a "Saudi Arabians aren't human", or would you prefer a "Saudi Arabians are human, so their ideas transcend borders"?

No, I'm suggesting that the system of laws and government of Saudi Arabia is for Saudi Arabian citizens to decide, not Americans or Europeans.

Why yes, thank you for clarifying what Godwin actually really meant to say

Oh noes! Godwin Alert! You lose.

If you think it's OK to murder people for merely expressing their opinion, then you are a fucked-up person and there is no hope for you.

Grow up. Speech is a tool. It can be dangerous or harmless. Who are you to decide which it is in all cases?

Note, however, I don't advocate invading said foreign lands and forcing our (superior) morality on them (aside from the fact that our government here in the USA is just about as bad, but that's beside the point),

This is not beside the point at all. How do you think George Bush Jr got all those people in Iraq killed? He never shot anybody himself, or pressed the button to bomb them. But he used speech to tell others what he wanted done. Aside from some Americans, most people around the world consider his expressions of opinion so criminal that he should be tried for them and convicted by the International Court of Justice.

The same is true with Bin Laden, BTW. Do you think he personally bombed people in NY? No, he used speech to express his opinion on what should be done. Most of the same Americans who defended Bush were quite happy to see Bin Laden murdered for expressing an opinion. Funny, eh?

So yes, it's OK for laws to regulate expressions of opinions.

Who are you to decide what should and shouldn't be a crime in a foreign land?