Microsoft in the service of the United States?
The news, fresh daily fresh, is that the Microsoft would literally “sawed off” subscribers to the service Live Messenger, of countries unwelcome to the United States, come Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Nord Korea (missile tests yesterday will have given a boost?).
Users of these countries, at the time of login, will receive a beautiful
Error 810003c1: We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service.
complying with a request from the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Not being a Microsoft company owned by the government of the United States, I wonder why the hell has been requested, and Microsoft have agreed to such a thing?
E'giusto cut out 160 million users, only fault, have to live in a country subject to sanctions by the United States and, I repeat, not Microsoft?
Some things can only increase the rough edges between two worlds so different, in countries where they still burn the flags of “Infidels” on the street, where even a small (oh, not so small) thing as this can help to increase even more the tensions.
Not that Live Messenger is an essential service, just think that in the countries of the former Soviet bloc is used almost exclusively ICQ, but if I lived in one of those countries mentioned above, I would feel really the victim of a grave injustice, and I'd do anything to convince my compatriots to boycott a company that, for no particular reason, prevented access to their server just because a government has obliged him to do so…
I wonder in what way Microsoft has been rewarded, a partial refund of the sales slump that will suffer in countries such as Iran, do not forget that, traitors, infidels capitalists or less, produce still the most popular operating system in the world, which is widely used also in these areas.