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Comment by pingyong | Hacker News Reader

In this specific case though, what are they gonna do? Stop selling media in Switzerland?

One of the problems is that much content is not available via legal means in Switzerland because the media companies have not got around to it, so many will use torrents as it's the only way to get the content. If they completely block legal access to content, then torrenting will only increase.

Yeah that was exactly my point. Here in Germany tons of people pirate things that aren't available too. Like if something is on US Netflix but not available here, well people are gonna pirate it. If 10 seasons of a show are available on Amazon Prime but Seasons 11-13 are only available on US Amazon Prime or some other US cable network, people are gonna pirate it. It's not really a surprise and leaving that market entirely is just gonna result in more people pirating.

One really annoying aspect of streaming services in Switzerland is that, even when some content is available via legal means, say Netflix, you often have the problem with subtitles. I often run into content that have subtitles only in German or only in French.

They can always do economic sanctions. Just look at what happened to GBP after the Brexit vote.

That has nothing to do with economic sanctions, though.

That's related to the fact that the markets believe that the UK boarded a train loaded with nitroglicerine, going downhill with failing brakes.

what economic sanctions? I haven't heard of any

AFAIK EU wants closed borders and a different financial center if UK leaves EU. Both of these can have the effect of hurting the UK economy.

It's the UK which is insisting on closed borders, specifically exit from the customs union and ending freedom of movement. The EU is just promising to reciprocate.

Brexit is the UK imposing sanctions on itself. You can watch the GBP tick up or down according to how likely it looks to actually happen on any given day based on stupid statements by the PM.

Sure, what I was saying is that Switzerland could have distanced itself from US and EU, and it would probably have had a similar effect on the Swiss economy (and the CHF).

Without outside money Switzerland would be in a much worse situation.

Many in Switzerland would be happy if the CHF lost value. Of course, that's only true if we can somehow maintain the same level of trading rights.

The EU wants the financial centre of the EU to be in the EU. That does make sense.

> AFAIK EU wants closed borders

What? That is exactly the opposite of reality.

Its the UK that want hard Brexit.

If by different financial center you mean a lot of banks leaving the UK, that is more a side effect of the UK leaving the custom union than a restriction from the EU. Banks don't like being unable to move their money.

No sanctions were involved for that, just the market losing faith in a currency.

Somehow I doubt countries are going to start sanctioning Switzerland because they don't play ball on copyright regulations.

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