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SpaceX has already said that Starlink hardware will be offered by partners for countries outside the United States, in order to abide by local laws (i.e., in Ch
by jedieaston 7y ago
SpaceX has already said that Starlink hardware will be offered by partners for countries outside the United States, in order to abide by local laws (i.e., in China, the hardware will have to route through the gfw)[0]. It won't be a magic bullet for censorship, unfortunately (unless you could smuggle a US router into another country, but there may be some kind of DRM or something to prevent you from doing that).
[0]: https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlink-broadband-services-in-2020/ https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlin...
- parsimo2010 7y agoIt is ridiculously easy to geo-fence these solutions, because the position of the ground stations must be known for the system to work (and spoofing won't be possible because then your signal will get steered to the wrong spot), so SpaceX could still block/reroute people's access even if you're using a region-unlocked ground station from another country. And if smuggling foreign equipment into China becomes common you can bet that location-based censoring will happen instead of equipment ID-based censoring.
- justinclift 7y agoWonder if the commonly disputed borders of some countries is going to make things tricky in those areas?
- parsimo2010 7y agoIt is nearly guaranteed that SpaceX will ask the US government what their official stance is and comply with that. They have a lot of space launch contracts that they don't want to lose.
- justinclift 7y agoYeah, probably a good approach in this instance.