> I'm not sure what benefit any country outside of the USA gets for honoring trade agreements that bind them to enforce US anti-circumvention, US copyright, and US DRM.
Sanctions?
> ircumvention, US copyright, and US DRM. A fortune awaits any country who has the guts to say "you know what, USA, we're going to allow blatantly copying your shit--what are you going to do, tariff us? Oh, wait, you already are!"
What does the target country do if Microsoft and Apple stop sales and support with immediate effect?
That's the effect of sanctions. Overnight their systems are all bricked.
The petrodollar may not be relevant anymore, but almost all governments in the 1st world have to bend the knee for Microsoft.
On one hand, I kinda think they deserve it, having ignored competing systems that are both cheaper and better.
Any government threatening the US can be easily cut off at the knees overnight at the behest of the US government.
Go ahead. In every blackmail there's a point where the only way forward is through.
> What does the target country do if Microsoft and Apple stop sales and support with immediate effect?
Apple makes luxury toy electronics. Hardly anyone is going to miss those in the world. And Microsoft support does nothing. It's way easier to fix your Microsoft products by cracking them than it is to go through MS "support". And it's often fixed this way in smaller companies and for private users. Freeing large companies to fix their MS stuff would actually improved the support.
What really locks everything in is the cloud. First step to sovereignty must be escaping US cloud services. Huh, I guess that's why everybody is trying to do what they can to move their stuff off American servers. Everybody is already preparing for post-American internet.
> Apple makes luxury toy electronics. Hardly anyone is going to miss those in the world.
I agree with your point, the world needs to start looking at alternatives to American big tech, especially for sovereign needs. However, this is the one thing that I think will keep countries bowing down to the US and it's increasing international relations insanity: people want their shiny toys. We're OK on the gaming front, now Xbox is basically dead, and PlayStation/Nintendo are Japanese companies. There's already alternatives to Steam on the PC front.
I think the whole take-back-digital-sovereignty will be a much harder sell for the people who love their iPhones. Until we get some open operating system with cloned apple hardware. I don't see that happening anytime soon though because it will take tens or hundreds of billions in investment (not even R&D investment, but pure capital) to pull off. China looks like they might have done it for their native market. They've certainly done it for EVs.
EU fines of up to 100s of millions of USD haven't stopped these companies from operating overseas. It is unlikely that they would exit a trillion dollar market because of some self-imposed security laws. Rather the opposite, the hardware would have to be free of whatever invasive security measure there is if EU wanted it. But they are rather xenophobic, so the incentives align.
> EU fines of up to 100s of millions of USD haven't stopped these companies from operating overseas. It is unlikely that they would exit a trillion dollar market because of some self-imposed security laws.
That's not what sanctions mean. When the US imposes sanctions on $COUNTRY, US businesses are not able to do business or any type, including charity, with the target country.
The companies would choose to operate in the EU if they could.
The US government is throwing its weight around, appeares to be preparing to illegally annex bits of non-EU land in an EU member state, to sow propaganda to fracture the EU itself, and has already sanctioned EU judges for doing their jobs when their job is against US interests.
Non-zero chance they will not have any choice in this. Gut feeling says we're still a long way short of 50:50, but it's just gut feeling.
A judge making a ruling to listen to a case, issuing arrest warrants so those cases can proceed (arrest does not mean proven guilty!), is not supposed to be a valid target.
The equivalent here would be if that American judge was sanctioned by the EU for issuing the arrest warrant for Maduro. Or would be, if Venezuela was an ally of the EU.
That Maduro was a head of state and still subject to an extraordinary rendition means that now the EU has to worry about EU heads of state being violently extradited to the USA. Not because anyone in the EU cares about Maduro himself, but because the US has signalled by doing this that they don't care about the old rules.
Sanctioning is now the same as complaining, apparently.
Someone is concerned about the US personally sanctioning EU judges, you make some false equivalence about EU sanctioning US companies, and then again about EU citizens complaining about US judges.
Is this all you do? It's not helping whatever case you have.
Why are you comparing US companies to EU judges? To me it seems like private business in the US is much more involved in the legislative than the judicative branch.
Sanctions?
> ircumvention, US copyright, and US DRM. A fortune awaits any country who has the guts to say "you know what, USA, we're going to allow blatantly copying your shit--what are you going to do, tariff us? Oh, wait, you already are!"
What does the target country do if Microsoft and Apple stop sales and support with immediate effect?
That's the effect of sanctions. Overnight their systems are all bricked.
The petrodollar may not be relevant anymore, but almost all governments in the 1st world have to bend the knee for Microsoft.
On one hand, I kinda think they deserve it, having ignored competing systems that are both cheaper and better.
Any government threatening the US can be easily cut off at the knees overnight at the behest of the US government.