Quote Originally Posted by Venom View Post
While I can see how that could be lead into Counterfeit in some stretch , A lot of them have open peripheral patents and base patents and GNU patents that they are based on .

For example in a reverse sort scenario , what are the legalities on say a mouse ( computer peripheral ) this although is widely used as part of windows PC is not solely theirs. What happens if they don't like something Roccat makes .Is it their choice what one could or couldn't use
If Roccat stops shipping to South Africa because of political differences and Roccat requests that all new Roccat hardware should be deemed as "unauthorized" in South Africa they will submit a request to MS and have to supply the device identifiers. MS may then honour the request and bring down the ban hammer. That will result in any Roccat hardware with a specific device identifier to then end up as disabled for Windows 10 users in South Africa. This will only affect grey/parallel imports then in effect which is covered by the act. It's not that the manufacturer doesn't want you to use their hardware, they only want you to use the hardware that was intended for your market. This could (in the case of say a WiFi adapter) be because ICASA has requested the manufacturer to say not ship a specific version of a card/device to South Africa, the manufacturer will then go through the same process (if they want) and can request for the hardware to be disabled in specific regions.

This by the way is nothing new, and is being done sometimes for various reasons.