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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.
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
Ahhh! You ended a sentence with a preposition!
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.
... 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.
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 :-)
As the current US president said:
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again"
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.
than the mining rights, or someone would be able to tunnel in uranus
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
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.
As the government doesn't actually refund the losses of any victim of scam victims (except in the vanishingly small number of cases where their money is recovered, months or years later), there is no less incentive right now to smarten up than there would be in a system under which the government didn't attempt to punish the scammer for his actions. People fall victim to scams because that's human nature, not because we have a nation of perfectly rational people who are shutting off their rationality because there's no punishment for doing so. The real world isn't a Libertarian's flight of fancy; humans are not perfectly rational actors.
On the other hand under the current system there is less incentive for new scammers to take up the trade, while in a system absent the disincentives of government punishment, given that gullible people will still be every bit as gullible, scammers would flourish.
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
It's the source of many lawsuits, and oftentimes claimjumping.
"Staking Your Claim to Alaska's Mineral Wealth"
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.
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."