There is a difference between people and networks, between people and packets. "Online" activities, initiated by people, are in no way assured of only traversing the networks of one nation state. This is a feature. As I sit here in Japan typing a message destined for a server in the US, it is most likely the packets will go by the shortest route trans pacific cables from Japan to the US but that is not assured, they could just as easily go through several other nation states. Each nation state may have its own rules about permitted and restricted speech or other activities which would govern the packets but not the person who does not happen to be within their jurisdiction.
The US legal code stems from a constitution which describes inalienable rights. The Japanese legal code, some of which stems from a far newer constitution, some predates it, explicitly defines rights and they are considered to come from the law itself. There are many other ways that rights can be defined or explicitly restricted. My comment wasnt about philosophy or the relative merits of one legal system or another but the simple reality described by this article that there is no such place as "online" and that laws or rights are attached to place.
Some very smart people got lauded here on /. for saying there is no "cyber crime" there is only crime everyone was happy. It seemed that people understood that the "cyber" part (or shall we say "online") is clearly just a question of the medium for plain old crime which we know happens in a place. Criminal is here and victim is there. If here and there are different nation states, we have a question of "was the action a defined crime in both places?". How are rights any different?
