Yes, a judge claimed that reason. Here is the last block court order (in portuguese): http://jota.uol.com.br/justica-rj-determina-novo-bloqueio-wh...

"Out of spite" is ridiculous indeed, but I sustain my guess that if a proper brazilian lawyer had addressed the case, no block would ever be ordered.

What is a "proper brazilian lawyer", particularly compared to the lawyers involved so far?

(I am having a No True Scotsman[1] kind of a reaction to this phrase, with a side serving of Kafka[2].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial

Any lawyer that has a license to work as a lawyer in Brazil, with brazilian justice system.

Their lawyers answering the judge's court order are from this american firm: https://www.zwillgen.com/

WhatsApp is not subject to the Brazilian justice system, it does not have to answer to Brazilian law.

And that tends to make Brazilian judges quite angry and thus they do the only thing they can do. Which happens to be blocking WhatsApp (the only real weapon that works against WhatsApp they have)

Sure, which is clearly far from legal. No wonder it is quickly overturned every single time, like now, lasted what, 12 hours?

Five hours this time.

Then Brazil doesn't have to allow them to operate in their country.

They don't operate in Brazil, just like other millions of websites. Do you think every single website that wants to serve content to someone in Brasil should have a subsidiary in the country?

That's not how the internet works.

Having written a letter to the Brazilian Congress about (almost) this very issue (in connection with the CPI-Cibercrimes inquiry), I think some Brazilians may be surprised to know that the U.S. does not require ISPs to block connectivity to third-party foreign Internet sites that facilitate violations of U.S. laws, directly violate U.S. laws, or ignore U.S. court orders, as long as the ISPs themselves have no relationship with the sites. In fact, a proposal to begin doing so in copyright cases, known as SOPA/PIPA, was extraordinarily controversial in the U.S. and was effectively defeated. The U.S. legal system generally appears to accept that ISP blocking of third-party connectivity is simply not an available remedy, even in "clear" cases of legal violations.

That means that it is not universal or obvious that this kind of blocking would be practiced or accepted. (For example, if a Brazilian company ignored a subpoena from a U.S. court, there would not be a legal basis for the U.S. court to order ISPs to prevent Americans from accessing that company's services.)

Some portion of Brazilians think it is "obvious" that a government would never allow its citizens to access Internet services that allow or commit violations of local law, or are simply not subject to local jurisdiction at all. But it's not obvious at all.

Probably means a local bar accredited lawyer.

But surely in order to engage a Brazilian lawyer they would need some presence in the country - which would make them subject to the countries laws.

> Blocking the service "out of spite" has no legal grounds.

blocking whatsapp because they are being uncooperative with Brazil's legal system is completely fair.

> They asked for access to data WhatsApp has no access to, and then blocked the service when they didn't get it.

Are they required to be able to provide such data when asked if they want to operate in brazil?

Did they respond to the request in a reasonable fashion?

They arrasted an ex-president and jailed a lot of people for "alleged delaying of investigation" in the weeks and months preceeding the coup detat that we had here. To be fair, every employee or director involved in the whatsapp crime should be in jail.

> blocking whatsapp because they are being uncooperative with Brazil's legal system is completely fair.

No, WhatsApp is not subject to the judge's jurisdiction. They do not have to cooperate, respond in reasonable fashion or anything.

The power of law has limits.