No More Lunar Land for Sale

dptalia writes "According to China Daily, Beijing authorities have shut down sales of lunar property. Apparently there's a "Lunar embassy" in China and they've sold 34 people deeds to land on the moon. Not too surprisingly, the government has declared this illegal. The Bejing office claims to be a satellite of the U.S. Lunar Embassy, run by Dennis Hope. Hope claims that while it is illegal for countries to stake a claim on the moon, it is legal for individuals and corporations to."

oldest dupe ever?

[joeyspqr]

"The Man Sold the Moon"
Robert Heinlein, 1950 (Street & Smith 1939)

Gift gag, genuine or gullible?

[dada21]

Just like the radio-hyped "International Star Registry" I don't think this is a scam really. Maybe they're just publishing an annual book of Moon "owners"?

First, I would think these deeds are presented more as a gift gag to someone than an honest investment opportunity. The star registry is lame to us geeks, but laypeople love it.

Secondly, with government so charged to "protect" consumers from scams, you'd think scams would go away. They won't. The only way that scams will be unprofitable is when government stops "protecting" citizens and lets people learn to be aware of what they're buying.

Lastly, even if this is a scam, the potential is there for the buyer to actually own the land. I once bought a tiny parcel of land from a company with a clear title. Years later, the title came into question, yet the new other owner couldn't find any previous owner anywhere. The company I bought from went bankrupt years before, and the courts awarded me the land with maybe $500 in legal fees.

Proof of purchase helps when no title exists to the land before it. In anarchocapitalist-speak, though, you don't own land until you've mixed your labor with it and no one before you has. Seeing as the moon won't be productive for another 50+ years, that'll be hard to do, but I'm thinking we need to find options for how we'll divvy it up for future generations.

how much lunar real estate is there?

[weighn]

These wags reckon they have sold 400 million acres.

over 2 million people from 180 different countries have purchased over 400 million acres of celestial real estate-- www.lunarrealty.com.au

- What is the surface area of the moon, in acres?
- What GIS / LIS / DBMS are they using to track all this land?

Extend homesteading laws into space already

[QuantumG]

If you get off your ass, spend billions of dollars of your own money and go land on the Moon you should have some legal right to fence off a bit of land and claim it as your own. Once you've lived on the property for some set period of time you should be free to do a geological survey and apply for mining rights. If it wasn't for homesteading laws like this the west of the United States wouldn't have been settled (and all them native americans wouldn't have been killed, but that's hardly relevant to this discussion).

Re:Gift gag, genuine or gullible?

[CosmeticLobotamy]

... you'd think scams would go away. They won't. The only way that scams will be unprofitable is when government stops "protecting" citizens and lets people learn to be aware of what they're buying.

My aunt doesn't fall for these things because she's protected. She falls for it because she's gullible and has always lived in a town filled with people she can trust absolutely. She's not taking risks because she thinks she has nothing to lose, so the government ceasing its protection is not going to help her. And her situation is exactly like everyone else's. But at least as long as it continues what protection it offers, a few stupid people will get their money back from evil bastards. I hate stupid people, but I hate evil bastards more.

If you want people to learn to distrust, teach them that (and good freaking luck. Those people don't learn things), don't blame the government for trying to help the ones that get screwed.

real issues here

[J05H]

I'm glad the authorities shut these jackasses down. These "lunar/martian land for sale" businesses increase the giggle-factor against any legitimate property claims in space. Sort of like AC Clarke's statement about space elevators being built 25 years after everyone stops laughing, the same can be said for extraterrestrial land ownership. People issuing fake/joke certificates of ownership is bad PR in the long run.

Space property rights, extended ownership and salvage rules are going to be hot areas of law over the next 50+ years. We've seen some action with new spectrum allocation, but nothing to grant land-claims, yet. There was a guy trying to charge rent for NEAR landing on asteroid Eros, but he got laughed out of court. Again with the giggle-factor.

Real challenges to establish property claims in the near future: SpaceDev has said they will emplace transponders and legally claim any asteroids they explore. Someone will figure out how to recycle rocket stages in orbit (salvage). A company flying a private lander to the moon or Mars will claim the uranium/nitrates/ice/whatever that they find at their landing site. Two probes orbitting Ceres will dismantle each other while fighting over the iceball. Those are legitimate future cases for space property issues to be resolved. Lunar acreage in 2005 is not such an issue.

Josh

A loophole in the loophole

[Stephen Samuel]

Hope thinks a loophole exists in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, which forbids governments from owning extraterrestrial property but fails to mention corporations or individuals.

That's because a corporation or person can only own land in the context of government ownership -- that's why The Dutchy of Freeland exists (whatever legal name they give it) -- If they existed as a corporation sans-government, then England would have had the recognized right (under the doctrine of terra-nullis) to override the claim to the platform and re-assert sovereignty.

This would also apply to the Lunar Embasy and it's claims. On the other hand, if the Lunar Embasy claims to to the embasy for a government that 'owns' the moon, then it falls (and fails) under the treaty.

This is all fine...

[chaboud]

I'm okay with people staking claims on the moon provided that a few conditions are met:

1. Plots are assumed by flag-planting and are arranged by latitude and longitude. Polar plots are comprised of larger longitudinal sections to balance out the area covered by each plot. These plots are small (no larger than one square mile).
2. Claim-stakers must take a standard 20 kilogram flag and plant it on the center of each plot to acquire it. That flag must be brought from sea level on Earth to the moon entirely intact (no building the flag in space). The flag must be visible from Earth once planted, and it must bear the signature of the owner. It must also be brought in person. If a robot plants the flag, that robot owns the plot.
3. For claims to be complete, claim-stakers must return to Earth (sea level) 20 kilogram soil samples from the moon from the planting-places of their flags. This will allow indirect surveying of the moon's composition.
4. Plots may not be sold directly. Plot owners may grant permission to other parties to lay new claim to their plots, but new claim-stakers must follow the rules governing virgin claim-stakers.

Re:Gift gag, genuine or gullible?

[elronxenu]

What if they're not selling the land per se, but are running a registry. You stake your claim to a parcel of land, and the registrar ensures that no two of their customers are assigned the same land. The price you pay is for their service as a registrar of unique land packages.

Kinda like the DNS really. Hope is Verisign and he's selling you something that he doesn't own and you can call it your own but you don't really own it, particularly not after some big corporation comes around to claim your piece.

Re:Whitelist law vs Blacklist law.

[patio11]

Well, technically, the Constitution whitelists a few things (regulating commerce between the several states, conducting foreign policy, etc), blacklists everything else (see any number of laws voided for falling out of scope of defined authorities -- Violence Against Women Act, for one), and then blacklists some exceptions to the few things that were whitelisted (no matter how broadly you construe "regulate interstate commerce" you can't regulate it in such a manner as to establish a state religion, etc). The Chinese governmental system, on the other hand, just gives the government root.

Staking a Claim/Claimjumping

[core plexus]

I work in the mineral industry, and we frequently encounter what is known as "paper staking", whereby the purported claimant just files the paperwork rather than actually physically staking the ground.

It's the source of many lawsuits, and oftentimes claimjumping.

"Staking Your Claim to Alaska's Mineral Wealth" [alaska-freegold.com]

Re:Legal according to...

[MinutiaeMan]

However, in the United States, according to Article VI of the Constitution, "...all Treaties made [...] shall be the supreme Law of the Land". This means that the treaty is not only binding upon the government, but also upon the citizens. That means that if the government can't claim it, neither can its citizens. ... I think, anyway. Naturally, IANAL.

Actually, here's another angle to approach it from: claiming something as property requires that you occupy it, or at least control it in some respect. Obviously that's not possible, unless Neil Armstrong left a Century 21 sign in the Sea of Tranquility or something. Which means that any such property claims can reasonably be argued to have been abandoned, if not unenforceable in the first place.

Regardless, any moron who tries to hold up a government that wants to build a research lab or a helium-3 refinery on "their" lunar property will be the cause of a great many guffaws in the halls of power shortly thereafter.

Re:Gift gag, genuine or gullible?

[ceoyoyo]

Like the buy a star as a gift thing? Sure, that's fine, and that registry is even for charity or astronomy funding I believe. But in that case you're buying the certificate and basically making a donation to something. This article sort of left that door open, but that's not what this guy does. He's selling land on the moon as if he actually owned it, could transfer ownership to you, and that would give you some right to it.

Verisign sells domain name registration services under contract to organizations that own those names (though some of that is in question now). You can't just open up a registry and start charging people to register their vehicles without any connection with the government, can you? Or for that matter provide a "registry" service for land here on Earth that makes the claim that you actually own that land?

The law on the moon...

[servognome]

will come from the barrel of a gun. It doesn't matter what laws are passed right now, whoever gets up there first and can protect their property will rule the land. Once a presence is established you become the defacto owner, and somebody has to force you off.

Biggest Landgrab in History

[Nom du Keyboard]

I've long considered the Outer Space Treaty the biggest - and most arrogant - land grab in history when our so-called governments decided that none of its citizens could own anything off of the Earth itself. In essence, they have taken the entire rest of the Universe and put it off limits for private ownership. How dare they?!

Of course none of the Outer Space Treaty actually matters since the truth is that land, as always, will belong to he (or she) who can claim it and defend it afterwards! We don't need no stinking treaty.

Re:This is all fine...

[QuantumG]

Unfortunately, unlike random-rock-in-the-pacific, if you try to export materials from the Moon to Earth you're likely get some busy body government official telling you that you don't have the legal right to sell those materials.

Re:What?

[einstienbc]

It's too late. I own the moon. And no one can take it from me. You don't believe me? Then come and try.

Seriously though, it's in a way like the American old west. You can claim all you want. But it will be the guy with the bigger (legal in this case?) guns that has his cake and eats it.