Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's also fortunate, because if some country has odd laws (and many do), at least their effects don't spread too much. Politicians and lawyers try their best to combat this (with laws as their weapon) through treaties. It's really two-sided coin. On the other hand, average person don't have to to learn about technical stuff. On the other, there is also weird stuff like illegal numbers, battles on encryption, censor…
> You encounter a computer system. You just can't tell if it's legal to access it or not. I find this point of view fascinating. Walking down the street, do you have any trouble telling which buildings are legal to access and which are not? I would posit that there is nothing unclear about the law here. In meat-space, the social norm is clear: you go into other peoples' property only if you have business there, you g…
Local social norm, in your meat-space neighborhood, sure. Also, norms from the other places, if you've did the research, or if their norms are close enough to what you're used to so your behavior is compliant or at least tolerable (for a foreigner).
Still, nerd social awkwardness issues aside, I tend to believe there there are quite different social norms in drastically different meatspace areas.
On the Internet it's only worse. You can't even tell which country/jurisdiction the site you plan to visit belongs to (no, addresses from whois may be a continent away from the legal system site ToS mentions). I neither think there are universal laws regarding this (to best of my knowledge, there aren't), nor that you can always know whenever it's legal to click that link you saw someone had posted on IRC or not, or read that link's contents, or save it.
(Ever thought that "liking" a post on a social network can be a criminal offense punishable with a few years in jail? In some countries it could be.)