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SpaceX Starlink prohibits to openly download the pirated content

Users wishing to openly download pirated content using SpaceX Starlink internet service should be prepared to receive a warning from the company.

One Starlink subscriber wanted to check if SpaceX was adhering to its anti-piracy policy, and found out that it does. A subscriber using the nickname substrate-97 posted a warning he received from the company on the Reddit forum with the following content:

We are compelled to insist that you and/or others using your Starlink service refrain from illegally downloading copyrighted content. Downloading copyrighted material without a license may result in the suspension or termination of your service and put you at risk of being sued by the content owner.

According to substrate-97, he deliberately tried to torrent the CBS series to see how SpaceX responded. The user has been downloading torrent files since he got Starlink, that is, for two months, but there were no notifications. It only appeared when he tried to download content owned by a Fortune 500 company. From this, Substrate-97 concluded that the warning only appeared when trying to download content owned by large organizations.

Apparently, Starlink uses the same anti-piracy mechanisms as the “terrestrial” ISPs: upon detecting a user’s attempt to download a pirated movie, he sends him an automatic warning.

This can happen if the copyright holder tracks the torrent download of the movie file. The copyright owner may provide the ISP with a list of IP addresses associated with the pirated movie file, requiring them to take action.
However, masking the real IP address is not that difficult, for example with a VPN. Consequently, a Starlink user could theoretically download pirated content, but only if he does not openly do so.

Recall that we talked about the fact that Fake SpaceX YouTube channels lured from users over $150,000, and it is also interesting to remember that Failure in the SpaceX warning system nearly led to satellites collision.

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Daniel Zimmermann

Daniel Zimmermann has been writing on security and malware subjects for many years and has been working in the security industry for over 10 years. Daniel was educated at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany and currently lives in New York.

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