"if they don't like the laws they shouldn't access the market"
That is something the HN crowd does not seem to understand/respect. Most of us enjoy the personal protection of the law yet we want to whip up a webapp and have no laws apply to us.
There are people in Brazil who have downloaded the application, and those people are connecting OUT to WhatsApp, which is operating in America.
So all the Brazilian government can do, is BLOCK its own people from accessing WhatsApp through the Internet.
The question is, should the Brazilian government have the right to block websites that it doesn't want its people to be able to see?
Ultimately that's a problem for Brazilian domestic politics, and also a greater issue of human rights. After all, that's how we describe it when discussing the Great Firewall of China.