Orbdev Files US Federal Suit Over Asteroid Claim 733
chongo writes "Orbital
Development has
filed
legal action against the United States by filing a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment in Federal Court.
After NASA's NEAR
probe landed
on the
asteroid
433 Eros,
Gregory W. Nemitz,
who
claims
to have owned the asteroid since the 3rd of March 2000,
sent NASA an $20 invoice for the
first 100 years of parking and storage fees.
NASA told him to "pound
sand".
OrbDev's
Eros
Project seeks to promote their ludicrous ideas about property rights in
space."
Show us the homestead! (Score:4, Funny)
If that asteroid were in Texas, the guy wouldn't be able to collect rent unless he'd lived there at least a year.
(Yes, I made that up.)
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:3, Funny)
That sonofabitch! I own the air molecules that bastard pulls into his lungs! See what nice colour he's about to turn when I get MY hands on him!
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:5, Informative)
Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the moon, nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person. The placement of personnel, space vehicles, equipment, facilities, stations and installations on or below the surface of the moon, including structures connected with its surface or subsurface, shall not create a right of ownership over the surface or the subsurface of the moon or any areas thereof. The foregoing provisions are without prejudice to the international regime referred to in paragraph 5 of this ARTICLE.
That gets rid of the Lunar Embassy's claim on the moon.
Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty:
States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty. When activities are carried on in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, by an international organization, responsibility for compliance with this Treaty shall be borne both by the international organization and by the States Parties to the Treaty participating in such organization.
Whoops, turns out there's no loophole!
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:5, Funny)
There is, actually, one loophole: Any government with a sufficiently large army can unilaterally abrogate any treaty they wish.
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:3, Insightful)
So, I move to Sealand and claim all planets and the moon, as well as all asteroids.
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:4, Insightful)
As this country's constitution says treaties have full force of law, he's thus bound by it whether he signs or not.
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:4, Informative)
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
Re:Show us the homestead! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is easy: The USA (and the rest of the world) are unable to enforce any sort of laws off-planet, so eros 433 is out of their jurisdiction. If eros wants to get their money, they can damn well go to eros 433 and impound the probe for nonpayment.
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:God (Score:3, Funny)
THis has to be a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This has to be a joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, wrong story. You're thinking of the Heinlein classic The Man Who Sold the Moon [amazon.com] , not Stranger in a Strange Land [amazon.com] .
No - SIASL was correct (Score:4, Offtopic)
Valentine ends up the sole inheritor of his mother's space-drive engine and the surface of the martian world (due to squatters rights IIRC - IANAL).
A large part of the book is about the governments attempts to take possession of these assets... hence the original poster was correct in his analysis.
Not to say that "The man who sold the moon" is not also applicable in this context, only that it does not preclude SIASL.
Can you "grock" it??
Q.
Re:No - SIASL was correct (Score:5, Funny)
Ouch... how embarrassing must it be to misspell "grok" when mocking someone else?
Re:This has to be a joke (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you define it if not for a convoluted form of "mine! wanna buy?".
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't mean it's a good system, it's the least bad.
I'd prefer a system without the concept of money with people working because of the intellectual challenges, not because of the money, but I don't see a workable implementation of such a system in the near future, the problem is there will always be people too lazy to work if they won't get paid.
What needs to be done
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:3, Insightful)
You hit the nail on the head. The problem with your Star Trek ideal is that the human species isn't particularly nice. We're lazy, vindictive, greedy, argumentative, teratorial etc etc.
About thirty years ago co
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reason that's true is because everything on Earth has already been pointed at by someone who said "Mine !".
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:3, Interesting)
The error in the thinking of mr. Nemitz seems to be typical for some legal "experts" in the US.
Less then a day ago we saw the story of a US company threatening an Italian Subject with the DMCA, those two claims have in common that these "experts" seem to lack the concept that there are areas where US law is NOT valid or applicable.
This is often called Imperialism and is generally frowned upon in civil societies.
In the case of Antarctica there is a (UN
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:3)
Re:ever heard of selling the brooklyn bridge? (Score:5, Interesting)
Only if you know nothing about American Indians. Native Americans as a group actually exhibited highly sophisticated concepts of land ownership, including negotiating rights connected to the land (hunting, farming, etc.). Do you think it's a coincidence that so many towns in New England are "Springfield", or some other "...field"? The european settlers didn't come ashore to virgin wilderness. They came ashore and found thriving agricultural communities, towns and even cities.
Happily for those settlers, the germs they carried resulted in mortality rates of 95% or more in the native communities, which meant free farms, often already planted. Unhappily for us, that mortality rate and the european position on natives at the time means that we don't get to hear about the history of those groups before that time.
As for the Manhattan purchase, those who "bought" Manhattan actually bought hunting rights for one season from a group not local to Manhattan. When the actual residents objected to being moved out, and requested a hearing, most were killed. The Louisana purchase is similarly troubling, since the US apparently bought the territory of more than a hundred native nations from the French without consulting with any of the Indian nations involved. The fact that many of those nations had gone to all the trouble of sending ambassadors to europe was of little inconvenience to the US or the French.
This is not to present Indians as universally noble, many groups allied with european settlers to gain an advantage over competing groups, and were often quite brutal when they had the upper hand. Still other groups picked up the european habit of scalping with a vengance (used by europeans to establish headcounts for any of several bounties on indian lives).
But don't pretend that they didn't have sophisticated concepts of land ownership. They most definitely did. What they didn't have was resistance to european germs and the firearms and organization to balance the military might of the european settlers. During the US expansion to the west coast, the US signed literally hundreds of treaties with native american nations. And broke every single treaty. Every one. Since then, the US has done just a little better. After all, they still have the casinos...
Regards,
Ross
Responsibility people. (Score:5, Funny)
What is the fine this sort of a thing?
Re:Responsibility people. (Score:5, Funny)
I think the penalty is instant death, but it sort of applies to everyone.
Markers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Did OrbDev fly up there to mark the boundaries of their claim? Somehow, I think not.
Good luck in enforcing that.
Maybe pointing to the sky doesn't.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Luckily the clerk wasn't asleep and NASA didn't actually pay.
No right to property, just defence of. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your property is what you can hold on to, and anything else is just hot air and handwaving.
Hot air and handwaving aren't necessarily worthless, because after all they reduce the pain and suffering in what we loosely call civilization, but to believe that rights have any fundamental substance is simply a delusion. The fact that those delusions are often imposed by force just proves the point.
It all boils down to what you can defend, and nothing more.
Obligatory Eddie Izzard quote (but relevent :) (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of that Eddie Izzard routine where the Europeans are seizing land from the Indians. After telling them repeatedly that they're not a nation and it's not their land unless they have a flag, the Indians go off and make themselves a flag. When they come back the English say... "Good - do you have a gun?" The Indians are... "Ooooh - you need a GUN and a flag." Sorry but this chap can wave around whatever bits of paper (and make as many flags) as he likes, but unless he has a 'gun' with which to threaten the government, it isn't going to work.
Of course, Terran property rights ultimately come down to who has the most guns too, but people forget that (unless they're Iraqi.)
Re:Markers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people are going to be stupid and point at a star that is really far away. When they "claim" it as theirs, they'll have to understand the fact that their star may have burned itself out already.
Asteroids and those smaller things are fairly difficult to see with the naked eye.
Re:Markers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. I bet he's trying to get a gov't agency to "recognize" his claim by paying the invoice.
Re:Markers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Markers? (Score:3, Insightful)
And curiously, Mr Nimitz has no ability to evict the probe.
You don't need to evict anyone to claim property. If I, and my gang of armed aliens from outer space, came to your house and "took it over". There is no way you can evict me. My weapons are too strong. Evicting the probe (or me and my alien friends in this case) only applies if there are no laws. If we
Re:Markers? (Score:5, Interesting)
As to aliens: without proof that they exist, he refuses to care. After all, without the indians/natives, who would have cared that europeans were invading a new continent? Therefore, he'll care when aliens actually complain that they owned it first. And then, he'll fight them. So he says.
As to his claim: he has declared that the UN treaty banning governments from laying claim to land in space only applies to governments, and that it has no bearing on individuals. The government's right to do anything comes from citizens, so this is the 'correct' order of things.
As to not laying foot on it: anything not already owned is deemed to be up for grabs to the first to think of it. A registry has been set up to allow people to state their claim against stars, planets, and other bodies floating in space. Our sun is already claimed, and I seem to remember there being a story about an exchange between the owner of the moon (or was it eros?) and that of the sun -- a bill was sent for the energy used, owner of the other body responded he didn't like the service and wanted it discontinued
Effectively, these people believe that their claim to these new territories is founded purely and simply in the lack of laws preventing it. Brute force will be required, they think, to say otherwise -- and they're already planning a galactic-level government (in the same shape as the UN) to help legitimize their claims and instruct counter-claims (and enforce their prior ownership, apparently.) Earth is outside its scope, for lack of proper representation. Everyone else is welcome to join, if they're a non-earth land (or gas?) owner.
Arguments will boil down to "but nothing says I can't, so, ha!" And that's where we ended the thread.
Re:Markers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Markers? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's interesting. He is attempting to enforce a property right in a vaccuum -- literally and technically. As an earlier poster pointed out, without "civilization" (i.e. a legal system) "property rights" are meaningless -- it al
Re:Is that your star? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Markers? (Score:3)
Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
Gregory W. Nemitz
Address: 8301-252 Mission Gorge Road, Santee, Calif. 92071 USA
Tel: 775-450-6144
Fax: 413-460-6480
Email: gnemitz@orbdev.com
Of course, this is all public information, and obviously I'm not encouraging anyone to contact or harrass Mr. Nemitz.
I just phoned him.... (Score:5, Funny)
Call the IRS... (Score:5, Funny)
Typically iron found in Space is contaminated with platinium, normally by about .005 or one-half of one percent. Assuming that 433 Eros is only 5% iron, there are 22.5 billion tons of platinium on the asteroid. The current price for platinium is about $750 per troy ounce. There are 29,167 troy ounces per short ton for a total 656,250,000,000,000 troy ounces. At today's price, that is $492,187,500,000,000,000 (~1/2 quintillion dollars).
Thanks for calculating it for us... now pay up. :)
Re:Call the IRS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call the IRS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call the IRS... (Score:4, Funny)
Do you want a property on the moon? (Score:3, Funny)
He's in MY universe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:He's in MY universe (Score:5, Funny)
And I charge $100 bucks a week for rent. Me thinks he owes me quite a bit of back rent.
I think it's about time to send him an eviction notice.
How about this simple solution. (Score:2)
So, by this proposal, the only one able to claim ownership would be the United States Government.
But, the second half of my proposal would allow a large company to "lay claim" to a resource in space, if they could prove (ie put forth plans and such) that they can get to the asteroid to do whatever they need to do with it.
This would allow companies to make money, and not have the "fast
Re:How about this simple solution. (Score:2)
What?!!? By that logic, all the land in North America should belong to bigasscorpco, since they can obviously turn a bigger profit on it, Wal-mart style, than any single homeowner could.
I just hope nobody shows up claiming they need a hyperspace bypass.....
Tomorrow's countersuit (Score:5, Funny)
An unnamed NASA official claims, "It's [Orbdev's] gravity keeping the thing there. God knows our probe has other places it could be going if it didn't have to drag along this dead weight."
Eros could not be reached for comment.
Re:Tomorrow's countersuit (Score:3, Funny)
Pound sand (Score:5, Funny)
Department policy forbids payment of parking tickets that have not first been duly affixed to the windshield of the vehicle. Please let us know when you have done so.
Love,
NASA
Dear NASA (Score:3, Funny)
Please be advised that your vehicle has hereby been impounded.
It is being held on the same asteroid in our newly-formed impound area.
Attempting to remove your vehicle from the impound lot without authorization will result in criminal penalties and the possibility of severe tire damage.
Love,
OrbDev
Expect the invoice soon... (Score:2)
On the serious note, what I can't understand at all about this (and other similar) claims to ownership of planets, asteroids and whatever else they want to grab is the basis of the title. How do these people claim to become owners?
sounds funny... (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand side wasn't there a treaty signed sometimes in the 60's that forbade the claim for extraterrestrial property?
Oh please.. (Score:2)
I love how he contrasts, "$20 is a great deal since a $225 million piece of equipment is 'parked' there."
Great, so do that give everyone the right to charge other people $1 a day to breathe because after all, you take over
Are Land Claims in Space Legal? (Score:2)
Re:Are Land Claims in Space Legal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Ask the native americans who owns the land. Once upon a time they would have laughed at the concept of owning the land. If you weren't there and using it then how could you deny it to anyone else and furthermore, what right did you have to spoil and damage it for your children. Now they understand too well what ownership means. It means that you will punish those who use something that you have told them not to.
This is often forgotten because we live in a world where we observe these 'laws' and they bec
Whoa! (Score:2, Funny)
That's silly! (Score:2, Insightful)
Every one knows that they have to put a ticket on the windshield first!
C'mon, mod me up - It's funny!
Same story, not slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
Silly (Score:2)
Then again, I'm sure we will be seeing some even sillier posts about how we need to set up some kind of property rights for when we start living on and mining asteroids.
1) Asteroid Property Rights
2) Extract oxygen and water from silicates
3) Buy mining equipemnt
4) ???
5) Profit!
1967 Outer Space Treaty (Score:4, Informative)
From Article II:
"Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
It isn't "national appropriation" (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, right... (Score:5, Informative)
Now, I'm getting curious - how do one 'establish a claim' on a piece of rock that's orbiting the sun? If it's just a cause of calling dids and grabbing what you can, I think I'ld like to claim ownership of Europa (no, not the continent, the ice covered rock thats up there). Not only can I charge NASA for parking there, but if they do find life, I can sue those organisms for not paying rent as well...
Seriously thought, someone should brief these fellows on the international agreements that relates to 'Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies' [unvienna.org]. Pay particular attention to the second paragraph in article I, qouted in full;
Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.
In short, if NASA or anyone else can land somewhere, they are free to do so. End of story.
precedent has already been set. (Score:3, Interesting)
International treaty (Score:5, Insightful)
From Article 1
From Article 11Re:International treaty (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not natural, you insensitive clod!
Re:International treaty (Score:3, Interesting)
Doubtful claims (Score:3, Insightful)
(FYI: this is why many 3rd world countries who try capitalism don't do that well, or at least part of the reason. In the western world it is so ingrained that we don't even think about it, but I can buy a house and be reasonably sure that I own the property and will continue to do so. I can take out a small business loan against it. I can sell it and make money. Imagine living somewhere where you can't necessarily get a clean title to anything. Imagine it takes years, thousands of dollars, and visiting hundreds of government offices to setup a legitimate business due to all the red tape. We are fortunate enough to have clear property rights established. Our capital is legitimately moveable and that's what makes it work.)
Something interesting about Eros.. (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmm...
Looks like Eros has the disctinction of being the only celestial body known to man that is both shaped like, and owned by an enormous prick!
Flawed logic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flawed logic (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a question regarding this "clarity" (BTW, I do realise this is a quote by Nemitz, and not the parent poster). Obviously he wasn't the first person to see it, but what proves that he was the first to intend to pick it up?
Imagine you were in the situation of Nemitz with this $20 note. He sees it and heads towards it to pick it up but at the same time (or seconds before hand, who really knows?) someone else sees it and goes to collect it. Who does the note now belong to?
Is it the first person who intended to pick it up? Nemitz would hope not, because I'm sure someone else said that they owned it before him (and besides, how could anyone prove it either way?).
Is it the first person to pick it up? Again, if this were the case, then that right would go to NASA I would assume.
Is it the first person to say it, and loud enough for everyone to hear? Well, interesting: what if the second person was deaf? Similarly, what if the other person who claims this asteroid doesn't know about Nemitz's claim? Too bad for him? Well let's assume, then that this person who was unable to counter the claim (because they didn't hear about it) made their own claim prior to Nemitz. Too bad that he didn't hear about that claim for him to fight.
You know what? I'm more than happy to concede this point on clarity to Nemitz, once he proves that he was the first person to make that claim.
The ultimate troll??? (Score:3, Interesting)
He's got balls the size of 433 Eros.
This isn't the solution. (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel compelled to respond on this as I feel it could be the most important issue of the 21st century - especially if the X Prize boys get their mojo on.
Property rights essentially appeared at the same time as the Agricultural Revolution about twelve to fifteen thousand years ago. For the first time, you really couldn't move down the valley a bit if someone you didn't like lived near you. You had a field, and that was the only way your (suddenly) large family could live through the winter. If you let him take or use what you'd literally broken yourself to create - you would die. Harsh stuff, and the reason the core of every successful legal system in the world enshrines property rights over all others. Even the U.S. constitution has property rights so mixed in, so tightly bound, that it mentions them again and again - they were as natural and obvious to the founding fathers as breathing.
So we move on to an age where agriculture is no longer quite as central to our lives. Suddenly we are coming up against the limits of property rights. "Intellectual Property" seems to be an obvious idea to an industrial economy - a simple extension of the concept that's allowed the human population to take over the world. As the discussions on /. have shown, this is no longer quite so obvious, so compelling.
Already you can see where I'm leading. If we take the idea of ownership as we normally see it and then apply it to the stars we come into some severe problems.
No consortium of insurance companies in the world, not even the whole of the Lloyds of London market could insure against a mis-directed asteroid impacting with the Pacific. So how could any mining corporation ever hope to start liberating resources from our solar system? Remember that the Lloyds market is the clearing-house for all insurance and re-insurance in the world, and even they struggled to swallow the risk from the Space Shuttle. Even then it took the intervention of the U.S. Government as insurer-of-last-resort to placate the market-makers.
So don't take responsibility: Let anyone get on with doing what they want? No claim means no liability? Right?
What happens when two mining companies lay claim to the same stretch of asteroids? If they are in the same orbit, and therefore easier to get at, both companies are going to want to protect their investment. Do we want to return to the days when warring villages were continuously slaughtering each other? When simply travelling outside the palisade meant risking death?
Here's another example. What if settlers arrive, and then someone else causes problems - e.g. their solar arrays are rendered useless by the cloud of particulates raised by a "nearby" extraction operation. They could go to court for help. It is a clear tort. After all, they can file electronically and it's only a twenty-four hour round trip to the central courthouse computers. There's just a small problem: They are dying for lack of air right now.
Here's the solution: There isn't one. Not with our current expectations and society.
As with all problems where human beings are involved, this is going to have to evolve. The societal structures that have worked so well for us down here are going to have to change. That isn't to say that there won't be governments, charities and corporations.
More likely, we'll have to have a long and drawn out struggle between the varying imperatives: "It's mine!" "You can't do that to me!" "If you try to stop me I'll defend my rights!" "You must leave that alone!"
Hopefully not too many will die. Some will.
Who knows what will emerge? The governing-corporation? The feudal charity? Maybe the gift economy shown so beautifully in the Open Source Movement will be the governing paradigm? All I know is that our system isn't going to stay the same - because it cannot work when celestial mechanics becomes a part of your insurance quote.
"Sunshine" (SM) license fees due (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Amnesty for unauthorized use of service
I, Helios Apollo, owner of a main sequence, spectral class G2 star of radius 696,000 km, situated approximately 1.5e8 kilometers from the planet Earth and known in the English language as "the Sun", have been advised that you may have been using the service known as "Sunshine", a stream of photons emitted by the above-mentioned star, for the purposes of visual navigation. Since, according to my records, you are not a licensed user of the service, I am asking that you account for your usage of the service beginning from 0h00 UTC January 1, 2000 according to either of the following billing plans and remit any amounts that may be payable.
The Photon Count Plan. Count all photons emitted from the surface of the Sun of wavelength greater than 395 nanometers and less than 695 nanometers that directly impinge upon your person and all of your belongings including real estate, then multiply by the factor 4.0 times ten to the minus twenty-five to yield the amount in cents of U.S. currency.
The Earth Residency Plan. Only 36 cents per day of use. Use shall be deemed to occur in a 24 hour period if at least one photon would have been used under the Photon Count Plan.
To be exempted from accounting for use of the service, please submit a copy of Certificate of Vampire Status.
Nobody noticed (Score:4, Interesting)
This treaty is the dragon that the Eros Project is trying to slay. They are attempting to creeate case law backing the natural right to claim, take, and use unowned frontier land [erosproject.com] - even in space.
If you support private space ventures such as X-Prize, you should also support OrbDev.
Sovereignty Issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Although, he may have a claim against Orbdev for selling him something they did not own {ever been to Paris and had someone try to sell you the Eiffel tower? Or been to London and had someone try to sell you Tower Bridge? Or } Well, you get the idea. And it's Orbdev that are going to be needing the lawyers, because fraud is criminal, not civil.
This guy doesn't stand a chance..... (Score:3, Interesting)
My first thought was 'well if he hasn't planted a flag there then how could he own it?'.
But that argument really doesn't stand the test of time. There are plenty of people that own land and property that they have never set foot on. Nothing strange about that.
So the moon is a tad farther away, and this asteroid a bit farther then that.
Distance isn't the problem.
The law isn't either.
It is enforceability and protection of said property.
A business owner who owns property on the other side of the country has many different tools protecting his ownership of the property. He has local, state and federal laws that specifically give him ownership, he can buy security service, he can hire people to protect his property, these are the ways that he takes ownership.
As long as his defenses are better then your offenses, as long as he wins the case of ownership and you loose then he owns the property.
And it isn't neccesarily laws that protect property ownership.
Take Saddam as an example. Saddam owned palaces all over Iraq. A year ago the owner of those palaces was not in question. You could try to lay claim to those palaces, but when Saddam was done with you, well lets just say you would apologize for your stupidity.
But now the US owns those palaces. We didn't go to court and prove anything.
We took them.
By force.
With big guns.
And in Iraq we are basicaly saying 'We don't need no stinking laws, if you think you own this property, then we challenge you to take it.'.
This has a bearing on this crackpot who sent Nasa a $20 parking ticket.
So dude has a peace of paper saying that he owns said asteroid. Isn't that nice.
Nasa dissagrees.
If dude can find a judge that will enforce his parking ticket against Nasa, then dude wins, ergo dude 'owns' the asteroid.
If dude cannot succesfully collect payment from Nasa then dude is left with one more option.
Eviction.
If dude can get the finances together, and the means, and the smarts to knock Nasa's probe off the asteroid then dude would truly own the asteroid.
But if dude cannot evict Nasa, and cannot enforce payment, then dude certainly doesn't own the asteroid.
This may all seem like the petty politics of a crackpot.
But China wants to put a man on the moon in the next 10 years.
The only thing stopping China from planting a Chinese flag and claiming the moon is a piece of paper that China may or may not have signed.
Pounding sand? (Score:3, Informative)
Also, if you do look at the cited documents on the lunatic's website, they're misaligned scans of court documents. But this isn't simple incompetence, it's encryption! "These document scans are formated to hinder text capture. No portion may be saved or copied for any purpose whatsoever."
Locke's Labor Theory of Aquisition (Score:5, Interesting)
when can the commons be appropriated by a private individual?
(1) Individuals can appropriate common goods for their private use.
Reason: because of necessity. If a person is to survive, then by necessity he must take some of the commons for his own use (food, shelter etc).
(2) One justly appropriates common goods by virtue of laboring on them.
Reason: a person owns his own body and his own labor. When he applies this to a previously unowned thing (e.g. works a plot of land to create a harvest), his personal property interests are mixed with that thing and he can claim it as his own.
(3) There are limitations ot the right to acquire unkowned property: (a) you cannot acquire property that you have not worked with your labor, (b) you can only acquire so much as you can use without spoilage and (c) you must leave "as much and as good" as you take (e.g. the acquisition should not impoversh the commons). An example of C is that if there are many oases on a desert route, you can take one and improve it for your private use. However if there is only one, this must remain in the commons.
Locke goes on to point out that these limitations are somewhat ameliorated by the introduction of money. Because you can purchase the labor of others, thta labor becomes your labor, and you can use it to claim more from the commons than you can personally mix your labor with. Likewise, he asserts since you can covert resources into cash and cash is in essence unspoilable, you can acquire more of a resource than you can make personal use of. Finally, because people can purchase the use of things from you, it becomes possible to acquire the entire stock of a resource without making it impossible for other people to survive.
Locke then goes on to argue that people, by accepting the use of money, have accepted the consequences which include vastly unequal wealth and power. Once he gets to this point, he becomes more controversial. Locke was no socialist: he was an advocate of the pursuit of unlimited wealth and personal power, taken from the commons if necessary, even to the point of believing some human beings could own others. Yet even he would not say you could claim something without lifting a finger to do something with it.
Diplomatic Immunity (Score:3, Interesting)
Like all other visiting officials, NEAR and NASA can simply refuse to pay parking tickets under diplomatic immunity. It happens on Earth, why not the rest of the cosmos?
Man I wish Douglas Adams were with us to chime in here.
What NASA should have said: (Score:3, Funny)
Love,
NASA"
complaint... (Score:3)
US Federal Court = Eminent Domain (Score:3, Insightful)
Main Entry: eminent domain
Pronunciation: 'e-m&-n&nt- Function: noun
: the right of the government to take property from a private owner for public use by virtue of the superior dominion of its sovereignty over all lands within its jurisdiction
Just 'cause you keep saying it, doesn't make it so (Score:3, Informative)
Why do people in the Americas have property as we know it today? Go back 500 years. You have native American tribes that claim land and defend it against other tribes. Then you have the British, Spanish, French move in and either purchase the land from the tribes, or take it from them by force and then defend it from other invaders. (Mind you, I'm not saying what they did was right.) Then you have the future Americans get together and say 'piss off' to the British, and they defend the land against the British. Now we're at the point where the government owns anything within the perimeter they defend. The government and individuals then sell that land as they sees fit.
So a claim has never been about what you say. When there is no government, as is the case in space, it's all about what you buy from someone else or what you can take by force. In the end, it all comes down to force. So until this guy flies out there to Eros and starts fending off invaders, NASA or anyone else can park whatever it wants on Eros.
Based On Property USE Rights (Score:3, Informative)
Orbdev is based on the feudal property notion that simply riding around a piece of land for a day gives you some legitimate claim to it.
This is NOT a correct or workable concept of property.
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:2)
how to establish property rights as we settle outerspace
Ha! What makes you think we're "settling outerspace"? We ain't doing shit there, and nobody else is either. Sure, some probes are going out. Rumor has it some manned missions are going out, too. But there's absolutely no "settling" going on.
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:3, Insightful)
To think about it now would be like a caveman contemplating if he should choose an AMD or Intel processor. We're so far off, it would be somewhat of a waste of time to argue about it now.
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, if we don't somehow artifically separate people into 'rich', 'middle class' and 'poor', the wealthy won't be able to use their superior command of society's resources to steer things in whatever direction they see fit. Frankly I think that's a good thing, but naturally wealthy people disagree. Viewed in this light, I can see why a complex system of property rights for outer space would be advantagous.
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you Ayn Rand.
Now let's get real. Property is not inherent. Moreover, the subject of what can and cannot be property is a limited one; slavery is a form of property that was once legally recognized but is no longer in most parts of the world.
What is inherent is life and liberty. Working from these one can derive certain forms of legitimate property, i.e., a presumed legal right to exclusive possession of things one creates, lest he or she be deprived of the labor (life and liberty interest) invested in its creation.
Now tell me, sir, when and how did you make the asteroid you now claim to own?
Speaking of real loonies... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bzzzzzt.
You'd better leave America (along with Western civilization, and virtually all religion) behind if you think owning property comes before "welfare" - which, in non-reactionary terminology, means efforts by men, through their governments, to help other men - and before "non-discrimination" - which means recognition of equal humanity and everything that flows from it: equal rights, due process, life and liberty, and all those other things Ayn Rand couldn't imagine living without.
Sigh. It takes a fairly well-developed industrial society to produce people with such effective blinders that they mistake their surroundings for the state of nature.
Lemme quote ya yer holy prophetess: I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue.
Say goodbye to the human race, then. Recognition of human inequality - intellectual, yes, but more importantly economic and social - is a bedrock principle of human morality, as is the value of efforts to rectify inequality. Abandonment of virtue is tantamount to abnegation of one's own humanity; and "self-reliance" (a meaningless idea, given the sociopolitical state in which humans inevitably find themselves) at another's expense is no virtue.
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:3, Insightful)
Once a governmental entity holds land then it can enforce the property rights of it's citizens by going to war locally to enforce remote claims. IE: War on Earth to assert property claims in space... War in Europe to assert
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:5, Interesting)
That alone tends to send up my red flags and move the needle of the bullshit meter at least a lot closer to the red zone.
Now please don't get me wrong. I'm anything but an anticapitalist and not against property rights, per se, but my ideas of such are rather more Thoreauian (who, counter to popular opinion, was a practicing capitalist and clearly would have thought a federal welfare system was a daft idea).
I think one must realize that property in the sense that you own the chair you whittled yourself is something rather different than real property. An insect may recognize the former, but not that latter, although they recognize the looser concept of territory or "personal space."
Real "property" rights are simply an extension into the capitalist realm of fuedal/tribalistic territorialism of the kind that Rand despised. I've always found this a bit ironic. Had capitalism not evolved out of such fuedal societies it isn't entirely clear that it ever would have developed a concept of real property at all. It isn't inate to the philosophy, and one might even argue that it's somewhat counter to it.
People didn't buy land. They took it. By force, and defended it by force. Then they could claim the right to "sell" that which they had stolen from the public domain. All real property comes from such a background.
So, you want to claim ownership to an asteroid? Well buddy, you better get your ass out there and build a castle. Then when someone else comes along you tell them to shove off or pay the toll.
If they're sitting there and you can't march the knights out of the castle to defend "your" land, well, guess what, you never owned it in the first place. Where there is no prexisting local legal jurisdiction it's back to might makes right.
Or in the more colorful vernacular, Shit or get off the pot.
If you yourself think we're going to develop property "rights" to space through some local process you're just as daft. We're going to fight and kill for them, just as we always have. And when we "discover" the "people" who already "own" a bit of space we might well expect them to take exception to that and fight back.
Quite frankly I'm already rooting for them, because we've got no fucking right.
KFG
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:5, Insightful)
If the head of the Mafia declared that he owned all of Chicago, and requested that everyone leave or be terrorized, the police would be dispatched. If the Mafia were sufficiently armed to hold off the police, then the military would be dispatched. In the USA it is a foregone conclusion that the military would win. Thus it is not disputed that US laws govern the territory called the USA. In the USA, citizens are allowed to own private property - in a democracy the citizens band together to fund said army for the common good (in theory).
The Poles probably had perfectly good property laws in the late 1930s - but it didn't due much to deter German trespassing. They didn't send in lawyers, they sent in tanks. Lawyers are only used by people who can't afford enough tanks to do the job (thankfully society has evolved to a point where this is usually the case).
Right now, if somebody could live independantly in space and laid claim to the Eros asteroid, nobody could do anything about it. Sure, somebody could file a claim in the UN, but nothing would stop you from just picking up the NASA probe and using it as scrap metal. No nation on Earth has a significant capability for prosecuting wars in space - yet.
I'm not saying this is how it should be - but this is how it always has been. The guy with the army makes the rules. Courts only have power because of the police. The UN only has power as long as its component nations are willing to supply troops. If you have a weak army, you had better make friends with somebody who has a strong army, and be prepared to pay for that friendship. If not, you won't be sovereign for long...
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:4, Insightful)
Moreover, when government owns all property, it is really those who control government who own the property. These are individuals just like you and me, acting in self-interest like you and me. The only difference is that they hold the "right" to invoke force as a means to an end, and we don't.
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We must establish private property in outerspac (Score:4, Insightful)
The moment a government has the power to control the land you need for shelter, food and industry, that's the day that government can control every fundamental aspect of your life. They can tell you where to live, where to farm, where to work.
99.9% of the fools who argue against property rights are basically envious of some rich guy on the hill and either want him living in a trailer park out of spite, or they have some idiotic idea that with the government owning all the land, they'd be living in that house on the hill for free.
Sometimes I wish I could just send them all to a public housing project for six months.