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Not a lawyer, but… generally in the US you need “standing” to file a suit. That is, you have to show that somehow you have a material interest in the issue to b
by jws 5y ago
Not a lawyer, but… generally in the US you need “standing” to file a suit. That is, you have to show that somehow you have a material interest in the issue to be decided.
I couldn’t force a suit saying the FCC was required to do an environmental study, and they didn’t study the light reflected from SpaceX satellites so the approval for the satellites is invalid. I just don’t have any standing there. The US legal system being what it is “It is hurting my business, I am losing dollars.” is pretty good at providing “standing”.
- xyzzyz 5y agoThat’s the theory. In practice, if judges want you to succeed, they’ll accept that you have standing even on very flimsy argument.
- nradov 5y agoSure sometimes trial court judges make politically influenced rulings but those are usually eventually overturned on appeal.
- skinnymuch 5y agoFor cases like this where the defendant is powerful, right? Since otherwise if the defendant is a random small org or person, they wouldn’t have the means to fight the case much in the first place. Or no?
- edoceo 5y agoWhere eventually and on appeal means $$$$$$
- qqtt 5y agoExactly right. Put another way, Viasat is saying "I will lose money because my service is worse, and I will be in a disadvantaged position because we followed the rules and the FCC allowed SpaceX not to. If there was no material impact to Viasat's business, they wouldn't even be able to file the lawsuit. The courts will decide if SpaceX/FCC acted unfairly towards Viasat by allowing SpaceX to operate under a different set of rules - again, causing Viasat's product to be worse and having a material impact to Viasat's business.
- leephillips 5y agoDoes the harm have to be financial? Can I sue because Starlink interferes with my pursuit of observational astronomy?
- rolleiflex 5y agoNot a lawyer, but my understanding is that the answer is yes, in theory. In practice, the primary people that could legitimately make that argument would be the observatories of universities or the like, people with substantial and well-documented prior interest in the act. In fact this concern was raised before. I don’t think any went as far as suing, though.
- leephillips 5y agoThat makes sense. I know there is a lot of resentment in the astronomy community over Starlink, but suing is a big financial risk.
- aeternum 5y agoIt's kinda sad to see the astronomy community consider a slight inconvenience to their hobby to be more important than worldwide internet access. We lost a jumbo jet to the ocean and were unable to find it because we did not have worldwide coverage. How many millions of people are without internet access in rural areas? Don't many consider internet access to be close to a basic human right? I was considering getting into astronomy myself but do not want to be part of a community like that. It's probably a vocal minority but it's still disappointing.
- leephillips 5y agoYeah, good call. You should probably stay away.
- tsimionescu 5y agoHow could thousands of satellites launched every year be a solution to bringing internet to the whole world? Do you have any idea how expensive Starlink will be? Whole villages won't be able to afford a single base station at current prices, and they are losing money today.