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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."
He's clearly a lunatic.
and not a drop to drink.
Morons deserve what they get... buying real estate without due dilligence? You're going to get screwed on Earth, too.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Well, at least we can be satisfied in knowing that the Moon is still open to conquest by anyone else. I'm still holding out for Sony to claim it and post advertisements on it for their products.
Shots: A Populist Parable
Not only do they sell Lunar property, but I just got this fantastic deal on this bridge in Brooklyn!!! Highly Recommend this seller!
Those 6 acres on the moon i just bought from them - cannot be developed on?
"The Bejing office claims to be a satellite of the U.S. Lunar Embassy, run by Dennis Hope. "
They can even take Hope away from people.
But seriously, this scam is as old as the 1960s, if not older. Is it my duty as a Slashdot reader to point out that a 30 year old scam copied recently, is not news? No, it's not, so forget I said that, because it is news since people are still falling for it.
By the way, I've got a star to sell you. A nice one, in the Orion Belt.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"The Man Sold the Moon"
Robert Heinlein, 1950 (Street & Smith 1939)
+1 fashionably cynical
Hope claims that while it is illegal for countries to stake a claim on the moon, it is legal for individuals and corporations to.
Legal according to whom? I suppose if you have a problem you could take it up with the Lunar Police. Perhaps they'll throw Hope into the Lunar Jail, and he can speak to a Lunar Lawyer about clarifications on Lunar Law.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
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.
Ahhh! You ended a sentence with a preposition!
I'm looking for a couple of acres to build my Mysterious Secret Moon Base - can I have a look at what's available?" And we thought people were stupid to fall for a Nigerian scam... This one really takes the cake. Or should that be the cheese?
Soooo, if you you live on the moon are you a Mooner or a Mooni?
Sorry - I know, a bad joke.
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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?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
I already have the parts assembled for my "Whalers on the Moon" attraction...
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).
How we know is more important than what we know.
I can sell land on Uranus?
Beware the fury of a patient man
- John Dryden
The "Outer Space Treaty" (Though the UN experts disagree slightly), illegal according to the "Moon Treaty", which wasn't much supported and probably would not be considered in case anyone challenged Hope on it. I'd assume these treaties are going to get revoked once anyone starts having serious interest in extraterrestrial property, but until then his claims are about the best you'll get, aside from the UNs opinion, which many here don't seem to care much about :-)
Claiming that you can sell something does not automatically give you the right to sell it, even under capitalism.
You kind of gave it away in your third paragraph. "Assigning ownership to chunks of land"? Yeah, well, who assigns ownership? Dennis Hope? And who assigned ownership to him?
In the real world, what it comes down to is that there has to be a government in control of the land, and then that government assigns (initial) ownership - either to the squatters who were there already, or to itself. Then capitalism takes over. But first there has to be the government to assign ownership. Before that, all there is, is possession.
So: Is there a government in control of the moon? No? Well, we could be at the pre-government stage. Is Dennis Hope in possession of some part of the moon? Also no? Well, there you go. He's not a "capitalist" who is "in the right" but oppressed by "land barons far larger than he". He's just a scam artist.
In the USA (ideal schoolboy optimism here), the government's powers are enumerated and the people retain the rest as their rights. That's "blacklist law" for you digit-heads: if it's on this list, you can't do it.
In many other regimes, the individual's rights are enumerated (or never even written), and the government retains the rest as their powers. That's "whitelist law" for analogy: if it's on this list, you can do it. Guess where the China government weighs in?
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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
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
You cannot be Sirius.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Haha, if you go into the store they have a "Lunar Tax" of $1.51 on everything.
Those Lunarians are already imposing export taxes!
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.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
than the mining rights, or someone would be able to tunnel in uranus
I can get you a better deal and sell you property rights to Uranus.
Forget Pluto though. That's Disney's territory.
This space unintentionally left blank.
OK, I got bored...surface area of the moon:
37.8 million square km
or 9,340,583,419.46 acres
subtract 400,000,000 acres which are pwned and you are left with...shitloads of infertile land, but what a view! B)
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Back when I was in grad school in Berkeley in 1978-1979, I bought an acre of land on the moon. Unlike this current guy, who claims to have legitimately laid claim to the whole moon and to be selling everybody a unique piece of land, the guy I bought it from showed up on campus wearing a silver space suit and doing a great schtick, making it clear that he's selling everybody the *same* acre of land, and that he's trading you a nice big fancy green piece of paper with engraving and shiny bits on it and pictures of the moon (the deed) in return for a little boring green piece of paper with a picture of a dead politician on it. He'd been arrested a number of times, because some towns don't like guys in space suits selling acres of land on the moon, but they couldn't legitimately charge him with fraud because he was quite upfront about how he's selling everybody the same acre of land, and he had lots of good pictures of the police trying to keep a straight face while busting him. And he finished with an anti-drug message, about how you shouldn't go taking large quantities of LSD or *you* might end up on the streetcorner in a silver spacesuit selling people land on the moon.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I think I bought the last plot! This will be worth a fortune!
It's the source of many lawsuits, and oftentimes claimjumping.
"Staking Your Claim to Alaska's Mineral Wealth"
All you need is a boat, lots of rocks and dirt, and voila "instant country"
strap a shotgun onto the boat, and have yourself a navy too.
You can then declare war on the US.. get invaded, and have your country rebuilt for free !
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Hi. I'm looking for someone to enforce my deed for lunar land. My country won't do it because it has no jurisdiction. I am trying to assemble my own army, but I have no money left since I spent most of it acquiring the entire crater out beyond the 10 mile mark of the perimeter. Please help, as my only other recourse is a contact I have in Nigeria. Thanx.
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.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Mod parent up! (I already responded in this topic.) Ownership is only actual when it is enforced. No one who's buying these so-called "deeds" have the ability to travel to the moon and claim their so-called "property". Therefore, these claims will be entirely moot when someone else actually manages to get there. That qualifies this whole endeavor as a scam in fact, if not according to law.
Ownership comes from power, and nothing else. The various prehistoric tribes "claimed" the American continents by settling on the land (so to speak). Then the the Spanish, English, French, et cetera showed up and erected a few towns with tall fences, brought some guns, and "claimed" the surrounding area.
Heck, in the 1880's, the various European governments carved up Africa like a roast, arbitrarily defining colonies everywhere. They only followed up with the settlers and guns years later.
The point is that people can make claims any time they want. But they're completely pointless until the soldiers and workers arrive to exploit and occupy the area. And the workers and soldiers are representatives of the government.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This man http://www.geocities.com/cjstender/McArdle.htm/ has been selling plots of the moon for at about thirty years. I still have a certificate for the plot that I bought in the early eighties (just $1.00).
No joke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva
http://www.minervanet.org/
Apply for a title? From whom? You're making the assumption that there's an existing government in place on the moon from which you apply for title to land.
That's crap. If you have the resources to get your butt onto the moon and establish a permanent presence, you should just declare yourself to be a sovereign state and tell the rest of the world to "f*ck off."
Be prepared to defend your new turf, however. Nothing gets a country's attention as much as someone attempting to declare sovereignty in a very visible place. You'll probably be getting a visit from the Space Marines, the Ukrainian Space Police, and the Chinese Taikonaut Re-Education Squad.
What, that means that also English and German not the same syntax have? That can I hardly believe!
Amazing discovery: Syntax is language-specific. News at 11.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)