It's pretty easy to ignore laws from space.

Reference satellite TV in the middle east. Al-Jazeera is banned in many countries, but still has high penetration as users just ignore the laws.

Saudi Arabia has an outright ban on satellite television... yet 97% of Saudis have access to satellite television. [1]

Iran also bans satellite television, yet more than 70 percent of people Tehran watch banned satellite channels. [2]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_in_Saudi_Arabia

2. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/19/iranian-min...

It's easy if consumer devices can talk directly to your satellites. AFAIK, this still needs a ground based relay to be of any use to the average person - it's a replacement for transoceanic cables or ISP backbones, not for WiFi.

Depends how expensive the receiver equipment is. Seeing as how this is an LEO constellation and not GEO one, and that internet requires bidirectional communication instead of a pure receiver they'll be more complicated and expensive than satellite TV for sure. I just don't know enough about the current hardware to know if it's within reach of the average consumer.

(BTW, I find it likely that even if the ground stations ate cheap enough to be privately owned, they'll be more like a cable modem than an 802.11 chip - a relatively expensive stationary piece of equipment that you hook up to an 802.{3/11} network in the home.

I imagine it would be easy for them to ignore the individual requirements of countries. But individual users would have to be able to broadcast in order to communicate here, and would therefore be more at risk of being found by authorities - if they can get their hands on the equipment to do so.

I doubt he would, but just as a though exercise: What would happen if he started answering http requests from space for free? Would that be a crime?

Questions about "crime" are a bit academic when it comes to international issues like this - it's less confusing to stick to more concrete questions like "would anyone shut down his satellite?"

But to answer the question, I believe a satellite is like a ship in international waters: you're obliged to follow the laws of the country whose flag you carry (and if you don't fly under a national flag you're... not really a criminal so much as an outlaw).

There are international agreements about radio transmission but AFAIK none have the force of international law. There is a long and glorious tradition of "pirate" radio stations transmitting from international waters (at least around Britain), which were often perceived as shaky (and technically illegal to listen to), but never prosecuted.

Just turn the whole satellite cluster into a massive network of tor exit relays.

Note that countries have not succeeded in stopping satellite phone users within their borders... for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan use satellite phones extensively.

Right. That's an alternative, smuggle your satellite internet equipment into a country where it is prohibited. Could be risky during the smuggling. Also very likely easy to detect since it's not exactly a LPI (low probability of intercept) signal.

Are those phone companies breaking the law when they let the call on to their network?

Beats me - but I do bet that these companies don't have any business presence in Afghanistan. And despite the Taliban being involved, which most countries in the world (and the UN) don't like, it hasn't been stopped. Which gives you an idea of how difficult it would be to stop ordinary people from using such a service.

Depends which law, and which country.