This kind of thing can't even be enforced, being so easy to bypass.
every country treats certain content as criminal as they wish. Where the servers are is just a minor detail.
All laws are easy to bypass, what's your point? Ever tried to go 60 in a 30km/h zone? Lack of 100% enforcement does not make a law useless.
they have bank accounts and deals with many tel co to operate as they do in each country they are.
you do not get pre-installed on the three biggest mobile operators phones (99.9% of market) and get deals where data to your service do not count as part of the limited data-plan on two of them, by just "being an IP address on the web".
you can't do that in brazil without having the papers to do business there. in fact, you can't even sell anything without the right documents. Just like everywhere else.
I don't know portuguese so I didn't actually read what the deal is.
Is this a service where subscribers pay the carrier a fee for 30 days of unlimited data traffic to whatsapp servers (VoIP excluded) + 50M of data ?
If yes, does that constitute a transaction the consumer makes directy to whatsapp via the operator? I understand that likely whatsapp and TIM (an Italian company btw) might have made some deal and exchanged some money for the use of whatsapp logo etc, but I guess that transaction could have been done anywhere.
the app has in app purchase. that page describes both what you described plus paying for in app purchases via operator
> TIM is an Italian brand owned by Telecom Italia. Originally founded as a mobile telephony company in 1995
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIM_Brasil
> Parent Telecom Italia Mobile, Telecom Italia
Same goes for the telcos. Offering free whatsapp and Facebook is a thing. And it's not because whatsapp had a "deal". It's because the telcos want more users.
Developing countries eat that up. People explicitly want to see whatsapp support or they don't buy the phone and many terrible devices have been sold on this premise.
Source: Experience
Nothing that lives of ads or telecomunication companies survive only by "serving the user". The telco only pre-install something on the device if: A. they are paid upfront, B. if they get a percentage of the ads.
yeah, serving the user is good, but remember that you are talking about companies that charges for SMS. the day they have to rely on "pleasing the user" hell will freeze over. They rely on regional monopoly, just like in the US.
People constantly switch network providers here since we have number portability. My wife, me and many of our friends switched to Vodafone cos they were offering a really great Internet package. Free Whatsapp, Facbook, Twitter, Instagram,and Snapchat plus 3.5 GB for what's essentially $9 a month. Here that's unbeatable and unheard of. http://support.vodafone.com.gh/customer/portal/articles/1813...
I doubt all these services are paying for for Vodafone to do this.
MTN does it, Airtel does it and Vodafone I think does it as a package.
If you currently don't offer some sort of package or free service, you're out of the competition.
I never been there, I don't read or write danish, I never interacted with danish government, or met any danish person.
If the dane government wanted something from me, and sent a letter to some random person, written in danish, even if it reaches me, I wouldn't understand it anyway.
Thus, having app in some other country store doesn't prove much, except that you clicked "publish" somewhere on Google or Apple uploading interfaces.
At which point you agree to adhere to their laws and regulations.
A famous example of someone operating legally under local law, but who got prosecuted for having merely a website accessible in another country, was Kim Dotcom.
That’s the current state of international law, either lobby to change it, or accept it, but don't ignore it.
Uhm nope. If my app(published on Apple Store/Google Play) violated a law in Saudi Arabia and they sent me a letter requesting me to appear and subject myself to 100 lashes for violating their law, I would very promptly disregard said letter, to put it politely.
It's a bit like saying "You should hang yourself, because if you don't, I'll hang you." The proper response is "get on with it then."
Just because you can take their money doesn't mean they have to accept that.
I can’t sell medical marihuana in most states of the US – and I don’t go and try, and then complain about getting arrested.
Instead, if I wanted to start a business doing that, I’d check out where it would be legal, and in which ways, and sell my product in those markets.
Why do you assume you can sell your product in markets without having checked the legality, and then complain when they ban your product because it violates the local law?
My point was - is there any reason why I, as a developer, should not check "all countries" when publishing an app? If Saudi Arabia wants to ban my app later - let them, I literally don't care.
And yes, consumer protection laws absolutely still apply. The laws of my country - if my country says that I have to give him 2 years warranty - of course he gets 2 years warranty. If his country says a seller can be subject to 100 lashes for selling prohibited materials - they can go and try executing this, I wish them all best luck.
And that is the problem. You can't actually expect people to hire lawyers from 108 different countries to see if their app is legal in each of them just because they're going to distribute it on the internet, to say nothing of what happens when two countries have mutually contradictory laws (e.g. privacy vs. data retention). And a person who goes to see the Great Pyramids shouldn't have to worry about being hauled off to Saudi Arabia and then stoned to death because their app doesn't prohibit blasphemy.
> Also Saudi Arabia will propably ban your App, which is what is happening in Brasil.
Which only increases the proliferation of tools to bypass the restriction.
You could expect facebook, with their almost infinite resources to so.
I never thought I'd say this, but: Good on Facebook for not complying.
If you purchased a VW car in Germany and had it shipped over to the US it would be on YOU to make sure it complies with all requirements of your country, not Volkswagen's.
Harmful lays laws should not be considered lawful just because somebody wrote them down.
That's a pretty shit example, given everything that happened around that case.
If an art dealer sells a painting to someone in brazil, does it mean the original artist operates in Brazil?
(Not that I agree with that, but that's what it looks like)
Apple has a corporate office in Brazil (google too) and they're the ones who distribute and approve the application for sale there. They're legally required (I assume) to respond to legal notice they're served with. WhatsApp is not legally required to do so, and others have pointed out that it might not even be legally feasible for them to do so.
Of course this situation is more complex because obviously Apple doesn't have the data and I doubt Brazil wants to get into a legal battle with Apple. And although Brazil doesn't have the ability to force WhatsApp to comply with anything, they do have the leverage of being able to shut down their service. Should make for an interesting story to follow.
At the very minimum, if they had served Apple/Google instead, they would have had a legal requirement to actually respond. I don't know much about the actual case so these are mostly assumptions.