offering a service to users, those users being in the UK should come under UK law
This is an attractively simple but terrible line of thinking. It implies that everyone is e.g. obliged either to block Chinese users or obey Chinese censorship (and infosurveillance) law.
Global jurisdiction is bad enough when it's just the US. If every country's jurisdiction extends to every website, that's a disaster. It's entirely possible for countries to have laws that are completely incompatible: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679...
I actually don't have a problem with those things mentioned in the MSDN article. If you want to do business in different countries I think you should expect to make some effort to abide by the laws and customs of those countries. If India, for example, want to block your software because it shows a particular border then why should "but we made it in USA" make any difference at all - India is a democratic sovereign nation, no?
A mere informational website? Well it's a problem, if you simply off-shore a news server to by-pass reporting restrictions and such that clearly makes a mockery of the legal system and those it's seeking to protect. To me it's fine to serve up that news if you don't undergo business in the country in which the legal blocks have been put in place.
If you expect anyone to abide by any laws online then how are you going to square this except by user origin, where the actions become realised.
This is an attractively simple but terrible line of thinking. It implies that everyone is e.g. obliged either to block Chinese users or obey Chinese censorship (and infosurveillance) law.
Global jurisdiction is bad enough when it's just the US. If every country's jurisdiction extends to every website, that's a disaster. It's entirely possible for countries to have laws that are completely incompatible: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679...