"The EU doesn't want companies supplying companies that do so." <-- This is what's strange, and new.
Companies supplying companies - it's an order of magnitude beyond the targets of the sanctions.
It becomes impossible to predict which companies and services may be suddenly impacted.
I'm all for the EU sanctions against Russia, and consequences for those entities breaching them. But Microsoft didn't breach the sanctions, and should be used as a tool to punish those that do.
Nayara were the ones operating/supplying a sanctioned country, not Microsoft, so what legal basis could the EU have against Microsoft?
There's nothing to indicate that Microsoft was legally obligated to suspend their service in this case, is my point.
They're not legally obligated to deny their services to customers who have legal disputes totally unrelated to their contract with Microsoft.
It's like getting the power company to cut your electricity because you have unpaid parking tickets - It's probabkly a great way to get parking offenders to pay what they owe, but it undermines trust in general, yes?
It's the way it should work. A private company can only be compelled to enforce a government demand under due process of the applicable jurisdiction. Ensures trust through transparency.
If both US and EU foreign policy can dictate who suddenly gets cut off from Microsoft services, trust in those services will erode.
After denying Outlook access to Khan due to (non-judicial) US sanctions against the ICC, multiple European public and private orgs are implementing exit strategies from Microsoft and all providers with a US presence.
The reason leveraging Microsoft as a foreign policy weapon works is because they dominate the market, and Eorope have grown complacent since end of WW2. All thta seems to now be changing.
Enforcing sanctions is not Microsoft's purview though. Unless their TOS specifically cover rthis scenario, which I doubt.
The article implies Microsoft is prepared to admit breach of contract terms, rather than risk EU distrust (or further distrust, after the Khan/ICC debacle).
Aren't French authorities quite ahed on FOSS adoption in their platform? I.e. https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/en
Microsoft isn't doing business with a sanctioned country in this case. That, yet again, is my point. You keep conflating Microsoft with the company actually breaching the EU sanctions.
Microsoft are absolutely being punished - they were forced to make choice between "doing business in the EU" (what exactly the EU threatened is unclear to me) or losing the contract value, plus whatever they may incur in damages though breach of contract.