Are EU Data Protection Laws Irrelevant? Does the U.S. own the Internet?

http://ow.ly/5N4IW

Artile entitled "EU Politicians Realize US View of De Facto Ownership of the Intenet Makes Their Data Privacy Laws Irrelevant."

Article appears on TechDirt.com. No author is listed.

The article discusses a question of great interest to the writers of this blog....exactly how should jurisdcitional disuptes regarding data on the internet be resolved? 

Appartently, U.S. officials feel that the U.S. has ownership of any website ending in .com or .net.  Due to the broad reach that the U.S. feels it should have over the internet, the EU privacy laws seem to have less importance in the eyes of U.S. officials.  With the continuing trend of moving data to the cloud...it seems that the U.S. will continue to assert control over data at an increasing rate.

Is the EU Safe Harbor dead? 

Jurisdictional issues surrounding the use of data, and the physical location of data, will continue to be an interesting topic, without fully established answers, for the forseeable future.  The variations in priavacy rights among different countries and cultures will also continue to make this area a murky area of law.