You don’t need a physical presence.

Okay. But you do need a legal/gov-recognized presence there. Without that, there isn't a way to be subject to their laws.

What could Brazil do?

What generally happens when an international service refuses to comply with a court order in Brazil is a temporary blocking that must be enforced by ISPs. Often it is DNS blocking, trivial to circumvent. Sometimes IP-level blocking, often also easy (via VPNs).

This often works and rarely lasted more than a day. I don't think I was ever personally affected by one of those blockings when I was in the country.

I don't really remember any case where a large server failed to comply and remained blocked.

EDIT: There are things that were blocked and remained blocked forever, but they're often things like piracy, CSAM sites... which are things that often get blocked even in the USA. Sometimes this is a harsher block directly at the host of the website, either via court order when it's a Brazilian host, or because international laws were broken, or because the host simply complied.

> What could Brazil do?

* Request extradition

* Fine local advertisers

* Confiscate any payments

* Harrass the ISPs who carry the service

* Harrass local users

I do nor advocate any of the above

But the idea a business that trades internationally can say "fuck you" to a nation state is childish

There can be terrible consequences

Ultimately, the only thing Brazil can do is take action on entities inside of Brazil. So yes, Rumble could just say on and put the ball back in Brazil's court for them to block Rumble or go after Brazilian advertisers.

I don't know, but the end result of that sounds a whole lot similar to what Rumble's doing right now. Therefore, I'd say that for other websites in similar positions, they could just send Brazil's mad demandz to the junk pile.

This state of affairs is unacceptable.

To whom?

a free and open internet.

That isn't generally the standard. The question is whether they are "doing business" in Brazil. Which clearly they were, since they just stopped.

"Not actively blocking IPs from an area" is a pretty low bar for "doing business".

They're a website. "Not actively blocking IPs" is literally the business they're in. If you think it's a low bar, then why bother to argue about it on the internet? Clearly you think they were doing something impactful, why is that not "business"?

> The question is whether they are "doing business" in Brazil. Which clearly they were, since they just stopped.

Business implies commerce, monetary transactions. It doesn't imply access however.

Selling Ads to Brazilian companies and paying streamers revenue-share is commerce.