On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.
Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.
That doesn't do them any good because the set of people who never intend to set foot in the US is still vastly larger than the number of people required to set up an offshore internet casino.
> On the other hand, I'm not particularly concerned about some tyrannical regime on the other side of the world that doesn't like the kind of content I have on my site. I'll postpone the research until I actually need to fly over their airspace or something.
Most people can't even name every country, much less tell you what their laws are. And then you'll be breaking them without even knowing, and if that's regarded as a legitimate reason to incarcerate someone then what are you supposed to do? Suppose you have to choose between a layover in Egypt or in Hungary, do you even know which one's laws you might have broken at any point in your life?
> Where does the UK currently stand in the spectrum between "country that everyone wants to visit sometime" and "country that nobody gives a fuck about"? It used to be firmly on the former side, but it seems to be drifting away to the latter side every year.
The problem is if you get on a flight to Paris you have no control over whether it might get diverted to London.
Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to.
There are two major problems with this.
The first is that you don't actually know which countries you have to avoid. There isn't going to be an app that can walk you through every law in every country.
And the second is that you're not the one flying the plane. You thought you were going to Charles de Gaulle but the weather in Paris is worse than expected or some drunk driver crashed the gate and drove out onto the runway and they're diverting all the planes, so after you're already in the air you find out you're actually going to Heathrow.
> Don't let slippery slope arguments take you into the dystopian future quicker than the world itself seems to be willing to
They already do stuff like this. The fact that they do it is now being used as a justification for doing it more and elsewhere. You can watch people telling you that slippery slope is a fallacy as they're greasing the hill.
Such a system would presumably account for possible diversions and plot your flight accordingly.
And yes, that is a thing that some of us do actually need. For example, while I have lived in the West for the past 18 years, I'm still a Russian citizen, and if I ever set foot there again they will likely have some questions for me regarding all the money for the war effort in Ukraine (see Ksenia Karelina for an example). Thus I would very much appreciate the ability to book a flight that is guaranteed to not be diverted to Russia or to any country that is likely to extradite to Russia, and I would pay money for such a service.
Who?
I can't think of a single case other than Ryanair 4978, a plane that was carrying a Belarusian opposition activist over Belarusian airspace. Not saying this was justified in any way, but even Belarus didn't dare to touch any foreign passengers.
If you're aware of any actual case of a first-world airliner from country A being forced to land in country B to have a citizen of country C arrested, please provide links.
What matters is if any of their assets are ever denominated in USD, or ever use the international banking system that is also controlled by the US. No other country has that kind of long arm jurisdiction.
Countries do things like this when they're run by fools and they can do this because the fools have weapons and prisons. What good has it done the US? Can US patrons of offshore internet Bitcoin casinos no longer find them available? Not a chance.
But then on top of being completely ineffective, it causes exactly what you're saying -- other fools in other countries want to treat the foolishness as precedent for doing it themselves.
Which is why the people in the various countries should put a stop to all of it, before it spreads and they find themselves in a foreign prison because their flight had a layover in a country with a law they didn't know about. And countries themselves should retaliate like hell whenever anyone tries to do it to one of their citizens.