How does it work in pre-internet media advertising?
> It's the Wild West otherwise.
That's the "do nothing" case that we're in now though isn't it?
> Pointless having a name if your pursuit doesn't have legal teeth.
Can't advertise into country X if you don't have a legal presence in country X. (Simple? Pending the years of legislative navigation, by which time alternatives will have filtered into the ecosystem: decentralisation and non-censorability, etc.). Which is basically what you've said "blocking countries from the advertising/participation pool".
Pre-internet, there weren't infinite scammers hammering magazines and newspapers from overseas with questionable ads. There was still some junk, but no where near as relentless. And most products were physical, so even if you were advertising miracle skin repair, you were manufacturing and shipping a physical product so it was harder to appear and disappear.
Ease of money transfer hasn't helped prevent scams either.
The issue with locking down by country is, say you have an upstanding SaaS startup and you want to advertise to the world. Can you realistically justify registering your business in 100+ countries? Even something like Stripe Atlas is arguably too heavy-handed for side-project stage.
I could see there being a verification engine whereby an advertiser posted a bond before that verification service endorsed them to publishers. But this would require countries to require publishers to use something like this, because they won't do it off their own back.
> The issue with locking down by country is, say you have an upstanding SaaS startup and you want to advertise to the world
It depends on what the ad is about. The verification requirements should be much more stringent for a financial or medical service than some random SaaS (the latter's customers can already be made whole by just disputing the transaction with their card issuer). I don't believe it's that far-fetched to require financial services to have a business presence in the local country and abide by local laws before being able to advertise.
> It's the Wild West otherwise.
That's the "do nothing" case that we're in now though isn't it?
> Pointless having a name if your pursuit doesn't have legal teeth.
Can't advertise into country X if you don't have a legal presence in country X. (Simple? Pending the years of legislative navigation, by which time alternatives will have filtered into the ecosystem: decentralisation and non-censorability, etc.). Which is basically what you've said "blocking countries from the advertising/participation pool".
So, yes, I think I agree :)