>

Isn't Western movies, music, and software bad? Wouldn't it corrupt them?  /s
I'm curious of the economic impact of this, is it as much as $1million? There's only 9 million residents, and looks like their median income is about $500 a month, so they probably weren't consuming that much legally in the first place. >

That's really going to help with foreign investment and trade. Companies like it when you play hard ball and ignore intellectual property norms. >

You laugh but Google has an office in Moscow, for some reason. So a country can be a complete dumpster but major companies might still invest. >

It's so funny how dumb the government and supporters of Belarus are.
"You aren't our friend so we're taking your movies and going home."
Really thought provoking foreign policy lol. It's like grade school politicking >


It's like grade school politicking

You can't expect more from Authoritarians. >

Describing politicans as "authoritarians" is, ironically, also grade school politicking. >

au·thor·i·tar·i·an
/əˌTHôrəˈterēən/
adjective
favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.
​
How is that not the realm of politicians? >

Because it applies to every single country on the planet to a pretty much identical degree? And is only ever used as a buzzword by nations against unfriendly nations to antagonize them? It doesn't describe any country or politicians in a significant way. >

Banning people from owning a home is authoritarian.  It might be a good way to run a country but it's still authoritarian, compared to a country that has no laws about ownership. >


Banning people from owning a home is authoritarian

Pretty much every law is. Banning people from killing other people is authoritarian but I'm sure you don't have an issue with that. Authoritarian rules are sometimes necessary, sometimes harmful, and sometimes pointless. 

compared to a country that has no laws about ownership

Every country has laws about ownership >


Pretty much every law is

That doesn't make sense though.  Country A has this law, Country B does not have it.  Therefore country B is less authoritarian. >

So the amount of laws is what makes a country authoritarian? That's extremely arbitrary. And even still, pretty much every country uses force to enforce their laws, locks up offenders, and expects subservience to the state's laws. That's extremely authoritarian by the definition you gave.
And if it's just the number of laws and not the way they're enforced, then it's even more arbitrary.
And you're ignoring the necessity of these laws. Banning rape? Good law. Banning drugs and using this law to destabilize minority groups and political opposition? Yeah, no. Much worse.
Does political freedom also make a country less authoritarian? I assume most people would argue no, especially given how the term is never applied to two-party systems, but other people would say yes. There's no concrete definition.
All these reasons make the term reductive at best and entirely useless at worst. >

For talking to other people i agree it's a bad term.  Because people have different ideas of which laws are bad.
But if you are just judging countries yourself then it's a good way to measure and a good word to use. >

VPN servers building up in Belarus >

oh they'd super love you to route your data through them >

Fine we will just win with a cultural victory then >

Unless India gets involved.. Then it's Duck and Cover situation. >

Excellent way to get the Belurussians to speak English and see how good Western life can be. 
See you in the EU in 10 years, Belarus! :-x >

A lot of them already can. I had a bunch of contractor software engineers from there. Spoke perfectly fine english. Febuary rolls around and they were concerned, feb 24th happened, by the 25th we fired them all. They didnt want a war, just happened to be where they were born. Afaik they still work for the contracting company, which is us based with offices all over in the cheap parts of the world, they just cant be assigned to us accounts.