[FirmwareBurner]

Why do you think it's a stretch? If Starlink wants to legally operate in a country as an ISP then it has to comply with the laws of that country. Just because it's using satellites instead of locally deployed physical infrastructure doesn't absolve it from ISP and general telecomunications regulations of a country.

So if the Spanish government were to make a law saying all ISPs must block the following domains for whatever reason, then Starlink must also comply in that jurisdiction or face fines or get booted out, and I don't know many businesses that take pleasure in being in contempt of the courts.

[spacebanana7]

Out of curiosity, is there anything technical the Spanish authorities could do to block Starlink (i.e jamming)? Or are legal/bureaucratic measures the only solution?

[s1artibartfast]

They can roll up to the starlink ground station and turn of the power or cut the cords.

Edit" it looks like the inter-satellite capacity might be able to handle more than I thought

https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f5...

[hinkley]

I believe I recall them bragging about increases to horizontal bandwidth in the later designs. You may be thinking of the original network?

[s1artibartfast]

IIRC, Originally they had none

[itishappy]

Starlink terminals are jammable, but the jamming source will need to be in it's FOV and it uses quite a focused beam. Not particularly viable for an entire nation.

The ground stations would be a lot more vulnerable, but cutting the cable would be a lot easier than flying a Ku/Ka band jammer overhead.

[bombcar]

There are countries where starlink isn’t available. But if you get one from a nearby country and keep quiet it works.

Spain isn’t large enough, I suspect. But they can lean on starlink as long as they’re sold there.

[entropyneur]

Hopefully not something that can happen in Spain, but in authoritarian countries they simply arrest or otherwise penalize the end users.

[ty6853]

Booted out of where, space?

[sneak]

Booted out of the market. Payments, banking, interconnection, contractual agreements.

Businesses exist solely at the pleasure of the state. The state runs the courts; they can invalidate your ability to enforce contracts.

Until and unless they smuggle the dishes into the country like bricks of cocaine and allow subscription payments in bitcoin, local governments can and will regulate Starlink service and users.

[Muromec]

Starlinks isnt a charity, so they collect payments for service and payments are not going through space for sure

[FirmwareBurner]

Booted out of the country mate. Why are you acting daft? Do you think Starlink could operate in Spain without a regional/EU branch that serves Spanish customers, collects payments, pays Spanish/EU taxes and can be summoned to court if it doesn't follow Spanish laws?

That's why Starlink has geofencing in place so they can ensure it operates only in regions they're legally autorized to, it's not some pirate HAM network that can just freely operate while evading local laws willy nilly.

[ty6853]

HAM isn't an acronym, FYI.

If you break the internet and summon starlink yes I think pirates will take the void.

[FirmwareBurner]

How many pirate ISPs exist in EU? How many of them have satellites in orbit?

[ty6853]

How many ibuprofen pirates are there in Europe? None, because it's easy enough to get it without a cartel operation.

Making wanted goods and services illegal just hands profits to the black market, it doesn't stop them. If Spain bans the internet there will be pirate ISPs tomorrow.

[FirmwareBurner]

>it doesn't stop them.

Yeah? Where are the pirate ISPs of North Korea then?

Mate, you're fighting with ghosts here. There are legit ISPs in EU, you don't need pirate ones. And there are legit VPNs to bypass whatever soft government restrictions are in place. There's no point arguing about endless made up hypotheticals.

[Scoundreller]

> How many ibuprofen pirates are there in Europe? None, because it's easy enough to get it without a cartel operation.

In a lot of Europe, you can only buy a handful at a time (like 16), at a relatively hefty per-tablet price and only from a pharmacy (good luck on sunday in a lot of places).

In France, you can’t just grab it off the shelf yourself anymore: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200115-pharmacies-ordered-sel...

Sometimes I leave part of my 500 ct bottle from Amerika because I don’t know why I bought so many in the first place.

[concordDance]

It could using crypto, but Spain would complain to the USA and they'd back down.

[hinkley]

Three years ago they would. Not for the next four.

[hulitu]

> Three years ago they would. Not for the next four.

You must be fun at parties.

Why do you think so ? They kissed American ass for a long time. Why should they stop ?