One Small Click for Man: How Starlink’s Terms of Service Accidentally Taught Me About Space Law
When I finally got around to reading Section 10 of Starlink’s Terms of Service – as one does on a wild Friday night – I discovered something both hilarious and thought-provoking: the governing law for disputes on Earth and the Moon is Texas law, while Mars is considered “a free planet” with its own self-governing principles.
Texas Law: Now With Extra-Orbital Reach
According to Section 10 of the Starlink Terms of Service: “For Services provided to, on, or in orbit around the planet Earth or the Moon, this Agreement and any disputes between us arising out of or related to this Agreement, including disputes regarding arbitrability (‘Disputes’) will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Texas in the United States.”
That’s right, folks – Texas has apparently annexed the Moon. Forget the Outer Space Treaty of 1967; the Lone Star State has staked its claim on lunar territory. I’m now imagining a future where astronauts must wear cowboy hats and speak with a drawl while conducting experiments on the lunar surface.
Legal Implications of Lunar Texan Jurisdiction
As a casual legal enthusiast (read: someone who has watched every episode of Law & Order), I find this territorial expansion fascinating. While international law, specifically the Outer Space Treaty, establishes that no nation can claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, private companies are apparently filling the void with their terms of service.
This raises intriguing questions about the intersection of corporate contracts and space law. If I’m using Starlink on the Moon and get into a dispute, would I need to find a Texas-licensed attorney with expertise in lunar matters? Would lunar deposition transcripts begin with “Houston, we have a problem with the plaintiff’s discovery requests“?
The Martian Exception: A Free Planet
Even more fascinating is the Mars clause: “For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
So while the Moon gets Texas law, Mars gets to be the libertarian paradise of the solar system. I appreciate Starlink’s forward-thinking approach to interplanetary legal frameworks, though I wonder if they consulted with any Martians on this arrangement.
Practical Considerations for the Lunar Litigant
If you’re planning a Moon vacation and expect to use Starlink while there, you should probably brush up on Texas civil procedure. Will lunar small claims court have special accommodations for the 1/6th gravity? Will the statute of limitations be adjusted for the time dilation effects of space travel?
And let’s not forget about lunar real estate disputes. If I set up my Starlink dish on what I believe to be my lunar property, but my neighbor disagrees, will Texas adverse possession laws apply? Does lunar dust count as an attractive nuisance?
Conclusion: One Small Step for Law
While Starlink’s terms of service may seem like legal humor to some, they actually represent an important first step in addressing the complex legal questions that will inevitably arise as humanity expands beyond Earth. The fact that private companies are already considering these issues demonstrates how rapidly our species is moving toward becoming multi-planetary.
So the next time you’re setting up your Starlink dish, take a moment to appreciate that you’re not just connecting to the internet – you’re participating in the development of extraterrestrial jurisprudence. And remember, in space, no one can hear you object to jurisdiction.
Robert Nogacki is a Polish attorney at law (radca prawny), the founder and managing partner of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec (Skarbiec Law Firm), which has operated continuously since 2006.
The law is equal for everyone, but the parties rarely are: on one side stands an organization with time, money, and lawyers, on the other a person with one business, one nest egg, and one life.
Clients rarely come to him with a legal problem. They come with a problem that also has a legal side: an audit that began with a single invoice, money entrusted to someone who has disappeared, a company that has to be passed on before it is too late. Most such matters are decided long before the first letter is written, in decisions made without asking and in deadlines nobody remembered. So he begins by asking how the client got here, not what the client should have done.
He advises entrepreneurs and families from more than a dozen countries, including those whose accounts the tax office has just seized and who do not know what to do tomorrow morning. He defends them in tax audits, customs and fiscal inspections, disputes with the tax authorities, and criminal tax proceedings. He represents victims of investment fraud and Ponzi schemes. He helps families set up family foundations and plan succession, so that a life’s work outlasts a single generation.
Not every case can be won. Every case can be run so that the client knows where they stand. Since 2006 he has represented the victims in the WGI case (Warszawska Grupa Inwestycyjna, the Warsaw Investment Group), one of the longest criminal cases in the history of the Polish financial market, because some things must not be left half finished, even when they take two decades. In the case of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Zonda (Zondacrypto, operated by BB Trade Estonia OÜ), he represents several hundred victims in the criminal investigation conducted by Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office and in the Estonian bankruptcy proceedings.
Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec is listed in the rankings of Poland’s largest tax advisory firms published by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and Rzeczpospolita, and it is a four-time recipient (2015 to 2018) of the European Medal awarded by the Business Centre Club and the European Economic and Social Committee. Robert Nogacki publishes regularly, in the press and on the firm’s website, for people who have a problem rather than a law degree, because a legal opinion the client cannot understand protects only the lawyer.
He believes that the best legal advice is the kind that means the client never has to appear in court.
