Starlink tells Brazil regulator it will not comply with X suspension

Or he said no too much?

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.

They key is to weld that power but not get caught doing it, then along came Elon...

Amazon may have more power than some tiny countries, but not the US govt as your comment would imply

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.

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.

It was banned because they refused to comply with anti-hate speech policies. According to musk, moderating his platform would be "political persecution" against those poor nazis.

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.

To be more fair, Brazil is a sovereign country, Starlink is not.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Nah, Starlink itself is bad, the intention is good.

Can it be a good thing while it's controlled by someone so clearly looking to exploit it's influence for personal gain?

Starlink's bank accounts are frozen. Musk loves money more than providing service. I doubt he'll provide the service for free.

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

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.

Haha, that sort of dependency can be just as dangerous for a company as it is for the state. You start fucking around like that and antitrust and defense production act start knocking.

Is there precedent for the US government just flat out nationalizing a company like SpaceX?

No 737 has ever leaked helium. So why did the Star liner leak helium? Why couldn't it just pop an emergency exit hatch mid flight like standard procedure? Why? Why? So many questions!

There's nothing we can do to space except make it harder for ourselves to use it. And we do use it, a lot, and not just for rich people stuff.

They aren't that high up. That's how they provide better service than Hughesnet. And yes shooting down a satellite has been possible for decades. People put them up there, they can take them down a lot easier, much smaller payload and the tech/math has been solved since the 1950's.

As far as banning starlink and confiscating receivers? The same way a country bans and confiscates anything.

There's also the possibility of compounding fines for violating the broadcast ban after they place it. This isn't Iran, Brazil has access to the banking network to go get that money.

You can use planes to scan for signals. Due to the wider band of the starlink units they could be detected by plane. Of course they can also be spotted on the ground.

Geospatial? Heh, try again. They are not in Geosynchronous (the word you were grasping for) orbits. Really they are low enough they could be destroyed easier than most. The only problem is there are so many of them.

Simple legislation baring unlicensed satellite transmitters could effectively make starlink illegal without a license. A prohibitively costly fee would create a situation that would kill the company in Brazil.