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Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

I have Starlink and it doesn’t seem to be affected in Spain, but I could be wrong. I just haven’t noticed it.

Why would it? That's a network in space. Could the Spanish league force a US company to block specific satellites covering some part of Spain and some part of not Spain? Seems a stretch.

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.

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?

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...

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

IIRC, Originally they had none

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.

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.

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

Booted out of where, space?

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.

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

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.

HAM isn't an acronym, FYI.

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

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

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.

>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.

Do we suspect there's significant demand for internet in North Korea? Market potential, sure. But I'm guessing if you asked North Korea what information distribution they wanted, they would say they just want a more honest newspaper.

>Do we suspect there's significant demand for internet in North Korea?

Why not? They literally throw USB sticks and optical media over the border. After my country broke away from communism, content consumption of foreign media was the highest priority.

> 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.

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

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

> 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 ?

Starlink does come back to earth often in the same country or region as the user. Then it would fall under all the same blocking.

I imagine that the blocking is semi-voluntary by the local ISPs, not at a transit or peering level.

Anyhow, I flicked through the tables for Starlink's Spain IP address blocks and they directly peer with Cloudflare, so short of Starlink agreeing to perform similar blocking itself or worse yet de peering with Cloudflare, I'd expect availability through them.

I think the relevant quote here is, "they can shake their fist at the sky".

Satellite internet isn't a philanthropy project. Whoever's selling it is operating a retail front in the client's country, running payment processing and delivering or shipping physical satellite dishes. Even if the satellite vendor is aligned with your interests (I'm not touching that third-rail topic)—if your government doesn't want you to have satellite internet, you won't have it.

Satellites aren't, in practice and for the time being, a technological end-run around sovereignty and the practical ability of governments to censor internet access.

It's been discussed on HN before, that even first-world democracies, such as the UK [0,1], feel comfortable enacting laws banning satellite internet.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979869 ("Starlink in the Falkland Islands – A national emergency situation? (openfalklands.com)", 225 comments)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 ("Saint Helena Island Communications (sainthelenaisland.info)", 145 comments)

Interestingly, I don't think you have to purchase the starlink in the same country you plan to use it (else what would be the point of the Mini version).

"they fan shake their fist at the sky... and with the other hand strangle payments that are very much terrestrial"

Starlink doesn't defy local governments except when the US government greenlights it (offering service in Iran.)

Would be interesting if they could jam starlink by tracking/blocking the laser coming off the spacecraft (satellite) probably far fetched

Tracking satellites is computationally intensive, Starlink has many satellites, and friends generally don't jam friends' communication satellites.

The old jokes about aggressive NFL Copyright enforcement would really pale in comparison to Spain developing a mature anti-satellite capability in order to disrupt soccer broadcast piracy at the physical layer.

> Tracking satellites is computationally intensive

Is it? I've seen a guy doing it by hand with a YAGI antenna and a little handled radio. But I could see it for many and the phased part. Also people have web models like this one showing the orbits.

https://satellitemap.space/

Anyway yeah just mental exercise not really arguing for it

Its much easier to ban imports and periodically do sweeps to locate terminals on the ground and confiscate/arrest the criminals operating them illegally. A Cessna or helicopter with GPS and directional antennae tuned to the right frequency bands is well within the reach of even banana republics.

That's still just giving a different corporation the power to control communications

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