A judge in Sao Paulo has ordered WhatsApp to shut down for 48 hours, starting at 9PM Eastern tonight.
WhatsApp is the single most used app in Brazil, with about 93 million users, or 93% of the country's internet population. It's a particularly useful service for Brazil's youth and poor, many who cannot afford to pay the most expensive plans on the planet.
Brazilian telco's have been lobbying for months to convince the government that WhatsApp's voice service is unregulated and illegal (not entirely unlike the taxi industry's posture on Uber), and have publicly blamed the "WhatsApp effect" for driving millions of Brazilians to abandon their cell phone lines.
A WhatsApp shut-down would be akin to taking half the country off the electricity grid because of an industry squabble over the impending threat of solar power.
Update: Brazil court lifts suspension of Facebook's WhatsApp service
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:08PM
Now, it can be a problem. If 90% of the cost reduction of your new way of producing power from coal comes from dumping the coal ash into the local reservoir because you don't legally count as a power plant and don't face the same regs and 10% comes from doing things a new way, the government has good reason to say "Hey, uh, that's still illegal and you should be regulated like traditional coal power plants."
Right, that's a problem, but in that case it ought to be possible to sue you for criminal trespass for dumping your stuff. Unfortunately since the dawn of the industrial revolution that recourse has often been blocked.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday December 17 2015, @04:26PM
Property rights aren't a panacea for tragedy of the commons, as neatly as you might think that would put a bow on your libertarian ideals.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2015, @05:13PM
In fact, the private/public (and sometimes personal) property dichotomy (trichotomy?) could be said to be the root cause of tragedy of the commons in the first place.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday December 18 2015, @05:08AM
It could, but I also think that's simplistic? Human needs conflict in a lot of subtle ways.