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Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts

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Re: Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts

#51
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obvi…

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?

Re: Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 publishe…

Anti-democratic speech like asking for a military intervention is a federal crime in Brazil.

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.

Re: Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts

#53
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 obvi…

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 outstand…

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.

Re: Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts

#55
post #2

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 th…

They were subpoenaed because of the judge's personal dislike for those accounts. It had nothing to do with the law.
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