I'm not sure I like the idea that you're "offering a service" in a country simply by being a data service that can accessed from it.

Someone from Australia can call me and we can chat. It doesn't mean I or my phone carrier are offering a service in Australia.

What does that mean? Arent most sites available everywhere by default?

My website is my website. You visit my website, my website does not visit you. My website is public, you choose to enter it. You visit my website through your infrastructure to get to my infrastructure. My infrastructure is publicly available to you, should you be able to access it.

The governing body of your (second person, not you specifically) infrastructure (the UK government) chooses to impose rules on my actions. Their threat is "we'll stop letting people in our infrastructure from being able to reach your infrastructure."

That is extortion, not working in the public's favor. The UK government is saying they'll block all roads from your house that lead to my website outside of the UK. My website is overseas, brother. The UK is blocking all the ports so you can't sail here. I don't "offer services" to you in the UK, I just don't prevent people from the UK from trying to reach my island. Nothing about my services requires the UK infrastructure. My services keep operating whether the UK government exists or not. How do they have any right over my infrastructure in this scenario?

If this is about ads, the UK has all the right to remove my ads from their country. That is within their right. Anything about blocking people from the UK is within their right, sure, but that's not my problem lol. Sorry you have a shit government lol

The internet is open. It is not up to a site to block a country just because. Which is what happened here, and this why their law is dumb and over reaching.

The argument is more like:

"UK citizens, via the open internet could see your site, and we have now decided that we do not like it. We are not going to complain via diplomacy or via your country's existing Laws or policing agencies, as such, you must pay us £20,000 in fines, per day, for existing because we say so. Despite you having no interests, employees or infrastructure, at all, in our country."

I guess this is what it comes down to...

1. Do you view allowing any arbitrary IP address to access your site as "offering service" to all countries? Or,
2. Do you view having a website as just putting something into cyberspace and it's the responsibility of countries to control access to it if they don't want their citizens going there.

Personally, I'm a firm believer that IP addresses aren't people and that an IP address range doesn't mean the end user is from that country, so I lean towards point 2.

...buuuuuut I also really don't like the idea that countries control access to things like that. I'm sort of in a "wish I could have it both ways" thing. Because the more sites that are adamant about taking view number 2 the more countries will be encouraged to censor. And let's be honest, this is all about control, there are sensible ways to protect children like creating standardized self labels for parental controls to reject and find on those instead, so... It's hard.

I hate this.