Elon Musk-controlled satellite internet provider Starlink has told Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel it will not comply with a court order to block social media platform X in the country until its local accounts are unfrozen.
Anatel confirmed the information to Reuters on Monday after its head Carlos Baigorri told Globo TV it had received a note from Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil, and passed it onto Brazil’s top court.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last week ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X, which is also owned by billionaire Musk, for lacking a legal representative in Brazil.
The move also led to the freezing of Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX. The billionaire responded to the account block by calling Moraes a “dictator.”
Why does the weird one think that he should have more power than a government?
I’m scared of the day Amazon realises they actually do have more power than the government.
They absolutely do not. It is genuinely shocking how many people in this thread fail utterly at comprehending the scale of the power wielded by the government.
It’s called the government cloud. Where do you think it runs. Amazon could bring a LOT of TLA agencies to their knees pretty quickly if they so chose
He absolutely shouldn’t, but isn’t this just a dick swinging contest by both Brazil and Musk?
I haven’t been following it but banning an entire website because they don’t have a ‘legal representative’ in your country sounds bizarre.
Twitter did have an office in Brazil (with legal representation) but after refusing to implement court ordered bans, the court fined them. Elon Musk threw a temper tantrum and shut down the Brazil office and eliminated his legal representation in Brazil.
Note that Musk will implement bans when requested by authoritarians, just for some reason he draws the line when it’s a court order in a democratic country.
Anyway the situation where Twitter doesn’t have legal representation is a situation Elon Musk created. Basically “I fired my lawyers so there’s nothing you can do against me now! Checkmate!” So Brazil says “fine, I guess we’re banning Twitter then…”
So Space Karen thinks the the law doesn’t apply to him and it’s going to cost him a lot of money. Again.
It is when the law says that for a company to operate in Brazil it has to have an appointed legal representative, and you close down your offices and refuse to re-appoint one when the judge demands you to.
Musk entered a “No pants no service” restaurant, took his pants off, was told to put them back on and refused, and is now surprised he gets no service.
Shut down the offices and evacuated employees when threatened with arrest. There’s a whole lot more to this story…
I think that’s a bit reductive.
It’s fair enough to expect a large company to have a rep to attend court if they want to do business in your country.
If they refuse then it becomes a “rule of law” situation - even if it’s a dumb law, you can’t have a multinational disregard the court’s instructions.
I’m on side with Elon and Radio Caroline in this issue.
He’s not broadcasting from inside Brazil’s borders, so the regulators can get stuffed.
The ground antennas that enable the service totally broadcast from inside Brazil.
On 3 March 1968, the radio ships Mi Amigo and Caroline were boarded and seized before the day’s broadcasting began. They were towed to Amsterdam by a salvage company to secure unpaid bills for servicing by the Dutch tender company Wijsmuller Transport.[6] Caroline was broken up for scrap in 1972.[21]
Looks like being in an international area doesn’t actually make you immune to consequences. If Brazil doesn’t want something broadcasting then the only way to keep them from shutting it down is to broadcast from inside a national area. If push comes to shove they can ban Starlink too, confiscate any receivers they can find, and even shoot down the satellites.
The satellites may be carrying starshields on them which are national security modules with the DoD. Shooting down the wrong satellite would be attacking US national defense infrastructure.
Nevermind starshields are whole DoD satellites.
I think when I read this, I replaced starshield with starlink
the ability to put a wide variety of instruments on the Starshield satellite bus
There are 6350 Starlink satellites in orbit. Dude launches 60 of them at a time, has FCC permission for 12,000, and plans to launch another 30,000.
Brazil has about 12. They can threaten to shoot down Starlink satellites, but they lack the capacity to actually do it.
He really thinks he is above the law.
Why can’t musk get stranded in space like these astronauts at ISS. We would all be better off.
I mean to be fair, Starlink is a satellite network.
Edit: this is a shitty Dad joke for those that are taking my comment seriously.
Most of you don’t deserve your humor license if you have one
No I mean it’s literally a satellite network. It’s in orbit.
It’s above the law. Literally.
Edit: a lot of people whooshing this. How? It’s so fucking simple.
Orbit = Space. Brazil = Earth.
Space altitude > Brazil Altitude.
Orbit is literally above guys. Like come the fuck on. It’s a funny joke.
Yeah, and they can do in space whatever they want (probably). But if they want to operate on earth providing a service within a country, they have to abide by the law of this country or stay out of it.
It’s like American Internet companies have to follow EU law if they want to operate in the EU, even if the company itself or their servers are in the US. GDPR privacy laws is a good example.
Supreme Court ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X
If Starlink refuses to comply or hinders others to comply, they are in contempt to the Supreme Court orders.
As long as this order is within the law, it shouldn’t matter if Starlink and X are connected or not.
And even if they are in orbit “above” the law, the ruling is only about their operating in brazil not about the satellite itself. And their operations within the country of Brazil do have to comply with Brazilian law and courts.
The decision to freeze Starlink’s accounts stems from a separate dispute over unpaid fines X was ordered to pay due to its failure to turn over some documents.
The issue of freezing star link accounts predates this shut down and was the result of some issue with x.
I’ve got no love for musk, but if the government is going after starlink because they have issues with x, it’s hard for me to disagree with him when he calls this dictator like. And thus it’s hard for me to fault him for using it as leverage.
The order to block Twitter went to all Brazilian ISPs, and Starlink is the only one that didn’t comply on Saturday. So the escalation stems from the disregard of an order that everyone was required to obey, but the intertwined nature of both companies being controlled by Musk is both part of the reason why SpaceX would even consider not complying with local law in a country it operates in, and why the Brazilian courts seem to be willing to aggressively enforce their own orders.
Edit: I’m convinced. This comment as originally written presented the facts out of order.
So the escalation stems from the disregard of an order that everyone was required to obey
You’ve got it backwards. Right in the article, it notes “The decision to freeze Starlink’s accounts stems from a separate dispute over unpaid fines X was ordered to pay due to its failure to turn over some documents.” The escalation of Starlink not complying comes from that, not the other way around.
ut the intertwined nature of both companies being controlled by Musk is both part of the reason why SpaceX would even consider not complying with local law in a country it operates in
Again, seemingly backwards. It was the government of Brazil that used their “intertwined nature” to freeze Starlink accounts, and Musk has, in turned, used that “intertwine nature” as leverage.
To be clear, I hate defending Musk, but I don’t see why it makes sense to freeze Startlink accounts if it’s X that hasn’t paid the fines. Can they go after any company that he owns stock in? Can they start seizing Teslas? How about MS infrastructure, if he holds some ownership in that company too? I’m just not sure the government of Brazil is on the right side of this, and not simply using their power to punish Musk. If people said “I don’t really care and I’m glad they are holding his feet to the fire” that would be one thing, but people are arguing that it’s actually Musk who is doing all of this, while it appears that it’s actually the Brazilian government that “intertwined” them and Musk just responding in kind.
Well, technically… he is- until proven otherwise. But so far, it hasn’t happened.
Innocent until proven otherwise?
I think you get something mixed up here. Innocence is not the same as being above the law. Innocence means you didn’t do anything outside the law.
And it’s a fact, that Starlink and X defied orders of the Supreme Court. I wonder what you think must be proven here?
I think you got something mixed up here. I never said he was innocent. I said he is above the law until proven otherwise. The guy hasn’t suffered a consequence for a single action.
Until he does- he IS above the law.
And starlink also gets banned from the country
Tesla next?
the problem is starlink is actually a good thing, providing decent internet access to places that can’t get it otherwise. I think the thing to target is the clear collusion going on between companies in ostensibly unrelated industries to pressure a government into reversing a penalty on one of them.
I think the thing to target is the clear collusion going on between companies in ostensibly unrelated industries to pressure a government into reversing a penalty on one of them.
Specifically because they are controlled by the same asshat. This is the same exact type of shit he does with stock manipulation and why he was eventually forced to buy Twitter. All his wealth has been generated by cheating and exploitation. I hope Brazil drops the hammer.
Putting up tens of thousands of extra objects into orbit that we now have to track and worry about collisions with other satellites is not a good thing.
Not to mention that their orbits degrades over time so they have to be continually replenished. That comes at a huge cost which is highly subsidized by US tax payers.
Also, each satelite that burns up upon re-entry isn’t just gone - it still introduces vaporized materials into the upper atmosphere.
Iirc they are harming the ozone layer.
Starlink is a ridiculous centralized solution to what should be solved by upgrading fiber networks.
It’s a bandaid with limited usefulness after maybe a decade. Basically an exercise in generating space junk.
In a lot of cases I would agree with you, but laying fiber optic cable through the Amazon in order to connect remote settlements is not feasible, starlink really does have a good use case there.
clear collusion
It’s less so “collusion” than it is “a billionaire brat using their obscene wealth and plethora of businesses to strong arm their way out of any accountability”. We can’t consider starlink a “good thing” because it will always be part of that, and any group or government relying on it to any degree should take note.
what specifically is “bad” about it? I understand people are concerned about space junk, but it seems worth the benefit to me.
How would you do that though? The whole point is the signal is coming from a satellite
Need to ship receivers to customers and those could be seized at customs if they’re illegal radio equipment.
Then, new customers would need a VPN to sign up, and old customers might have trouble renewing with local payment methods
The comments here are weird TBH. No, Brazil will not start shooting down satellites. It can just simply outlaw and sanction Starlink, stop anyone from paying Starlink for their internet subscription, and have peeps go around and confiscate ground stations.
Also, they can just go and ask the US to help enforce their ruling, telling them “do you want to be friends with us or Musky boi?”
That’s a really good point. Starlink can ignore this order, but the courts can order banks to stop processing payments to them. Pretty sure Starlink isn’t going to “protest” this at the cost of profits.
Of rourse Starlink could then go be further shady by taking payments in Bitcoin to get around it. It’s an interesting arms race to follow.
Brazil is well within its rights to sanction Starlink and prosecute people for evading said sanctions, and have people pay fines and go to prison for buying Starlink with Bitcoin.
Just like the US does with Iran and Cuba.
Unfortunately, the US is now fully reliant on SpaceX for access to space now that they decided to rely on corporate spacecraft rather than building our own and Boeing has proven themselves unreliable since that change was made, and now that they finally have a craft they ended up stranding astronauts on the space station until SpaceX can rescue them due to defects. Plus we can’t use Russia like we did after the shuttle program ended but corporate space travel wasn’t there yet. And SpaceX isn’t publicly traded to where it might be possible that enough investors could pressure Musk to cave.
So I doubt anything will come of it. Brazil will rattle their sabers. Musk will stand his ground, and the US will stay on Musk’s side while pretending as much as possible to be staying out of it.
Is there precedent for the US government just flat out nationalizing a company like SpaceX?
I wonder what would happen if a Brazilian company failed to comply with a US court order.
