Does European law apply to American companies? Why would SDN need to comply? What business is SDN conducting outside of the United States?
Yes, in the same way that American trade law applies to European businesses due to our wonderful global trade agreements. As SDN itself, I don't see a particular reason if it's incorporated in the US. But if something in their web infrastructure is there that has a European entity presence, then their subsidiaries may be forced to comply. As above, if SDN has a webhost that has some Europa location (like a server or something), that webhost may force its clients to comply with EU policy for it to comply with EU policy.
Again, I have no idea what SDN's actual reason for compliance is. All that I am pointing out is that although a particular business may have nothing to do with these issues (and I really doubt SDN has any business interest that is affected), the companies you may work with forces that behavior on you, because they do have to comply. Likewise, we have no particular European interests, but if we want to stay on SDN, we will comply, right? So, bow to your masters in Brussels (about this issue) and move on with your life, right?
But this is a very mild issue. You have to understand that since that we Americans own the root servers for the Internet (yeah, ICANN supposedly is international, but it's very US-controlled), US policy has driven most of those issues. As the Internet gets more regulated and enforced through cross-national means, I have a feeling that we're all going to revisit Internet sovereignty again because yes, I don't want to be sued on UK grounds for libel. That's the real downside of global coupling, and it's actually one of the reasons why the UK is invested in Brexit. They've borne a bunch of weird changes in their law from Brussels from unaccountable bureaucrats, and they got pissed about the increasing interference in their daily lives.
