I agree with you. Following every law is neither practical and in the case of censorship even counterproductive.
I just wanted to point out that the reaction of the court isn’t as entirely pointless as it may seem on first thought.
I’m really for open access to old books, but for playing devils advocate I can see the courts point:
International websites have to respect local laws. After all those are the only ones I can directly influence (by voting, etc.)
If we’d start to ignore this (even if it is in my advantage in this case), this means I have no influence any more on how companies are allowed to interact with me (which shouldn’t be the case in a democratic state)
It’s a hard decision as the internet is global and I don’t have a real solution, but I don’t think taking US (or any other) law as „the valid law on the Internet“ is helpful.