Pursuing legal action against the person (Elon) and not an unrelated business he owns (Starlink)? Wasn't the entire thing caused by a disagreement over X anyway?
Elon Musk is not in Brazil so action against him would be a waste of time.
Action was against X, and then Musk shut down X's Brazilian office and left outstanding debts. The supreme court evaluates that X and Starlink have same ownership and therefore Starlink (which still has local representation) is being held responsible for X's delinquent debts.
I am not a lawyer so can't comment on legality of this but it's obvious that X's stance on free speech is incompatible with Brazil's legislation on hate speech. My opinion is that X never had any intention to observe Brazilian law, and ran out of options to delay and deflect.
As with all thing Musk I feel like there's a need to separate the artist from the art.
If this happened in a liberal democracy there is due process, you can't unilateraly freeze a corporation account, they would prevent whatever company is in violation of the law from doing business in the country and that's it. If the owner can be charged for wrongdoing you can do that too, and then finally if the owner has outstanding debts to the country you can liquidate their assets to recoup the amount.
This is not what happened here, a company is accused of breaking the law so another company which, beside partial ownership has nothing to do with it is getting its account frozen.
It's weird to see people cheering in the comments for this. If Jeff Bezos gets in hot water with the US government over Blue Origin, should they just freeze Amazon's account?
Elon Musk makes it abundantly clear that he has absolute control of his companies and publicly entangles them (e.g. sending Tesla engineers to audit Twitter).
X was operating in Brazil while being maliciously non-compliant, in a manner obviously directed by Elon.
Ergo, Elon is playing games to operate global companies without complying with local legislation.
I am pleased to see a government willing to put a stop to this madness, and I am comfortable with piercing the corporate veil to prosecute this bad actor who is at the root of public and consistent malfeasance. The US government seems entirely unable or unwilling to offer any enforcement.
> Action was against X, and then Musk shut down X's Brazilian office and left outstanding debts. The supreme court evaluates that X and Starlink have same ownership and therefore Starlink (which still has local representation) is being held responsible for X's delinquent debts.
SpaceX has other shareholders as well. How would you feel if the Florida government got mad at blackrock for ESG, fined them for it, and took that money out of your 401k?
Musk is a minority shareholder in SpaceX which owns Starlink. One corporation (SpaceX) is not supposed to be liable for the actions of another (X), even if they are owned by the same person.
Musk doesn't refrain from using his companies, mainly Twitter, as weapons in petty personal disputes and showdowns. It's a situation that allows piercing the corporate veil, even under US law. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#...
> supreme court evaluates that X and Starlink have same ownership
They don’t though. And this is obvious even with the most basic web search. To me this looks like political intimidation and retribution by an out of control Supreme Court justice (Alexandre de Moraes). It’s a shame to see Brazil turn into a lawless banana republic.
Legally this is known as "piercing the veil" and if generally reserved for situations like this where someone is attempting to use a corporation to evade responsibility for law breaking.
Am I understanding this correctly? The judge didn't like what X did (or didn't do) so he is making moves against StarLink, which would allow users to potentially bypass the censorship this judge is pushing for.
It's not a question whether the judge disliked what X did or not. They were subpoenaed to block the accounts engaged in anti-democratic speech. Failing to do so, X would have to pay a 2k USD daily fine until they cooperated.
X decided to challenge, Moraes raised the fine to 20k USD daily, they continued defying the order, until they closed the company thinking this is a legal way to circumvent the debt they owe to the state.
Moraes found out that there are links between Starlink and X (Musk), so he decided to go after Starlink instead, blocking their bank accounts until X pays what they owe to the Brazilian state.
Musk owns 79% of voting shares of spacex (but yes, only 42% of equity). I guess it depends on your definition of “owns”, but its not unreasonable to say he owns spacex.
Rule of law doesn't mean written law. A written law can be against the rule of law. Conversely, something might not be against the law but violate the rule of law.
> "the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power."
Doesn't that quote support the judge's position, though? X is being treated just like all other citizens. The page you linked also states "no one is above the law," so I'm sincerely not sure who we're talking about here.
Considering the original requirement for twitter to remain active in Brazil was a human rights violation.... this too is a human rights violation. Speech ought to be free.
Some of the accounts asked to be blocked might not have been committing crimes but ones asking for storming the congress, federal intervention and overturning a democratically elected president and questioning the electoral process are defined as anti-democratic acts, which are a criminal offense.
So if the original requirement is just putting Musk in his place thinking he's untouchable in his ivory tower is actually following the law in the country is a human rights violation... Then the EU is the most human rights violating group of countries in the world.
The EU does routinely violate human rights as there is no free speech anywhere in the EU. People are regularly jailed in Europe for blasphemy, upsetting people, 'hate' speech, etc. The EU has never been a solid proponent of human rights. There's a reason the American revolution happened (And is arguably more needed than ever)
> storming the congress, federal intervention and overturning a democratically elected president and questioning the electoral process are defined as anti-democratic acts, which are a criminal offense.
Are you referring to the speech that the judge ordered to be taken down? I don't know the details, but it seems the request was related to alleged anti-democratic remarks. I'm not familiar with Brazilian law, but I believe that some countries impose restrictions on free speech. Regardless of what was said, it's not uncommon to comply with the judge's order first and then challenge it in court until it can be published again.
This is a human rights violation. Humans have a natural right to discuss the overthrow of their governing authorities.
I'm not even sure why this is controversial for Americans. In school, we are all taught about the times when our government attempted to do this (and sometimes succeeded), as examples of what not to do. Thankfully, the SC has reversed most of these convictions. Long live the American revolution. Its ideas are needed today more than ever.
Starlink is widely used in deforestation and mining in Brazil. Elon Musk personally flew to Brazil to promote it (with Balsenero?), despite the predictions that Starlink would be used that way. The political pitch was that schools in the far reaches would use it - that has measurably failed to materialize. Meanwhile, Federal raids on gold mining operations show Starlink transceivers routinely.
The issue is not Starlink. It's that the Brazilian government is too inept and corrupt to tackle illegal mining in its backyard. Many countries have huge landmasses (US, Canada, China, etc.), yet no one gets away with something as brash as illegal mining.
no it is nothing at all like blaming vegetables.. there is no cell phone coverage in the distant edges of inland Brazil.. and cell towers can track users.. Starlink directly enables clandestine communication where that is otherwise not possible.
Directly enabling something doesn’t matter. If the tool is made to only do that, then it does. There are a lot of cases in the US about this. Like Betamax case where the court ruled that just being used for something illegal doesn’t give culpability, it’s necessary to be made specifically to do something illegal.
If starlink specifically added functionality to enable illegal mining then you might have a valid argument.
no - in those cases you mention there are alternatives or work-around products available.. what work-around product is available to have real-time communication from remote spots in the Brazilian territory ?
Satellite internet from other providers that’s available at a higher price.
But that’s not relevant. Because starlink is usable by everyone. Do you think they should have some way to prevent mining companies from using it? Is there a law in Brazil that prevents starlink from selling to miners?
