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Lord British Claims He Owns the Moon
An anonymous reader writes "Following the recent discovery of Richard Garriott's old moon rover, the man known as Lord British has laid claim to his own lunar territory. Moon dwellers, all hail your new overlord!"
Garriott may or may not own a legal title to Lunokhod (it is by no means a given that the auction sale was a legitimate title), but there is no way buying Lunokhod gives him any ownership rights to any piece of the Moon, however small.
From http://www.space.com/news/soviet-moon-rover-space-law-100322.html:
Validity of ownership?
Enter space lawyer, Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz. She is Director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law and Research Professor of Law at the University of Mississippi.
"The soundness of a property right depends in large part on the integrity of the documents that memorialize the right," Gabrynowicz told SPACE.com via email. "This is why property buyers conduct title searches before buying property. They want to be sure that the title is good."
Gabrynowicz said that without reading the papers or knowing how they were processed and by whom, she can't speak to the validity of the ownership of a space object purchased at auction.
"However, a contention that buying a space object that landed on the lunar surface from a sovereign nation gives rise to a property right to the territory under it is wrong," Gabrynowicz said.
Gabrynowicz said that States-Parties to the Outer Space Treaty of 1966 cannot acquire lunar territory by landing an object on the moon.
"The USSR was and Russia is a party to the Outer Space Treaty," she added. "It did not acquire the territory under the object when it landed. One cannot sell what one does not own. Since USSR/Russia did not have a property right to the territory under the landed object, there was nothing to sell."
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I guess I could be wrong, but I have a feeling he is kinda joking around when he made the cracks about having people pay to "park in his spot." I find it hard to believe that he is being serious about having real claim to any moon property (other than the landers, themselves). Am I the only one thinking he is just goofing off with such statements?
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Wow. No fact checking. Typical over-the-top-can't-get-the-facts-right journalism. The article tries to paint Lord British as laying claim to the entire moon, in the title, when in reality he's only even trying to claim at least the land on which the rover sits, and at most the land the rover crossed before it laid to rest.
The lawyer who was quoted when asked if he really owned the lander, is, quite frankly, covering her ass, as any good lawyer would do, when asked a question like that. What she says, that she can't determine if he owns it or not without seeing the title, is true. Any good lawyer would say the same thing if you called them to ask if you owned your house. They're not going to assume you do, even if you have been living there for the last 10 years. That would be borderline malpractice.
What Gariott is doing is, in fact, not nearly as crazy as it sounds. Since virtually every spacefaring nation gave up their rights to the moon in the Outer Space Treaty, any claims to the moon by right of discovery that could have been made by the US or Russia (as USSR's successor state) are void under international law. The treaty, however, does not contemplate private ownership of the moon. Gariott actually has a number of very very reasonable legal arguments that he owns a part of the moon. Yes, it does sound very strange to a lay person that he might have a "right of discovery" some land on the moon, since in the lay sense he did obviously not discover the moon. That said, legally, it's not unreasonable to say that he might. Nor is it unreasonable to say that he might gain the land through simply owning the rover on it long enough.
While the auction could not and did not sell him the land, this does not mean he can't own it. If no-one owns the land, then there are a number of legal ways to acquire it, as I've briefly discussed above.
The article, frankly, was clearly written by someone with no understanding of the legal circumstances around the matter.
Ultima IV and V were pretty decent. By Ultima VII the series was so overly self referential that I don't think hardly anyone but old fans would have enjoyed it. Ultima VII still did a lot of stuff that was really innovative then and even now, but was certainly more than a little campy when it came to plot. The ultima games haven't really aged all that well IMO, but are still a lot of fun. The Underworld games were awesome too. Most people seem to forget that Ultima Online was one of the very first MMORPGs too. I would say that the influence of Lord British is still being felt. I don't think he is the visionary that Warren Spector or Peter Molyneux became, but he got pretty filthy rich off of those "shitty" games, and influenced a whole new generation of game development. He deserves credit for quite a bit.
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he bought his way into space with his ridiculous riches and he expects to be looked up to?
Well, if he's in space, then aren't we all looking up to him?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Most people around here are taking Garriott's bait and are picking apart the legal ramifications of his rover ownership, but it's much simpler than that. You own something if you can defend it. I.e., you have an army. Treaties are meaningless outside the context of force. Ever wonder why making someone follow a contract is called 'enforcement'?
And, because R.A.H. is taken as Gospel around here: the moon dwellers didn't gain sovereignty until they showed that they could pummel the bejeezus out of Earth. It turns out that it actually works that way in real life.
Contrary to his title, "Lord British" is not, in fact, British. He's actually American and even went to my high school in League City, Texas, USA.
Ahh, I was going by the Wikipedia article, which while not disagreeing with you, does state he was born in Cambridge England, then moved to Texas in the US.
Assuming that is true, he is/was indeed a British citizen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott
Even if he is a US citizen, or dual citizenship, both countries still have signed the treaty I mentioned and he would still fall under those laws.