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Property Rights In Space?
ATKeiper writes "A number of companies have announced plans in the last couple of years to undertake private development of space. There are asteroid-mining proposals backed by Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, various moon-mining proposals, and, announced just this month, a proposed moon-tourism venture. But all of these — especially the efforts to mine resources in space — are hampered by the fact that existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources. A new essay in The New Atlantis revisits the debates about property rights in space and examines a proposal that could resolve the stickiest treaty problems and make it possible to stake claims in space."
There's plenty of space out in space!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
plan B just patent stuff needed to get to space even if it's just the smallest of things.
I already bought all the best bits of moon. Now get off my land!
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Short version (it's a very long article)
There is precedent in the U.S. federal government's history of land grants to railroad corporations -- once the corporation owned the land, it had a strong incentive to increase the land's value by laying track. The situations are not quite parallel: in that case, the land rights only covered surface uses, not mineral rights; and of course, in the case of the Moon, the federal government has no land to grant. But while the general recognition of secured property rights would here take the place of grants from a previous governmental owner, the central premise still applies.
In the scenario envisioned here, the government would recognize claims and register titles, and claimants could then begin to grant, sell, and trade property deeds.
Free Martian Whores!
Is that everything is always moving.
That is one problem, but a somewhat bigger problem is that nobody has yet come up with a plan to mine moon rocks and return them to earth where the cost of the missions doesn't greatly exceed the value of the rocks.
That's why, unsurprisingly, even folks like Jain who claim that "private companies can do things better" are wholly dependent on taxpayer subsidies.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Governments tend to prefer to pretend that natural rights don't exist, imagining that the rights of the people come from THEM. But the truth is that they do exist. Homesteading is one such right. By mixing one's labor with the land, whether it is rolling plain, or an asteroid, one gains ownership of that land.
Governments have the guns though. But then, the space miners would have the asteroids, so I would guess that they would leave them be after the first asteroid made a near miss of the planet.
Us the public. Pretty simple. You want to mine an asteriod lease it from the people of the world, sell your product, make a profit, but do it in such a way that we all benifit to some degree, even if its just a tiny percentage.
Basically your then paying everyone for a right to use the common material in space. This does not preclude making a personal profit, just that you must acknowledge first and foremost that it belongs to everyone, then you may make your profit.
There are currently no governments with the ability to enforce their laws in space. Therefor if you can get to it in space and defend it from those who want to take it from you, it's yours. Of course, if you want to sell some of it back on earth, you will need to get governments to agree to let you sell it (unless of course you smuggle it in, but that is yet an additional expense).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
That is you enslaving men even as they venture out into the stars. "Dont go too far bold adventurer, you owe us and we shall be paid, no matter how far afield you wander." Fuck you.
Good-bye
Property rights in space will likely be determined by who gets there first, and who can muscle away the competition, either by military or political means.
Personally, I'm terribly excited about the upcoming prospects for things like asteroid mining and permanent settled colonies on the Moon and Mars (as a couple good early candidates). It looks like we are on the cusp of an explosion in private commercial space flight, exploration, and development. And with China getting into the game, we may have another space race.
There are asteroid-mining proposals backed by Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, various moon-mining proposals, and, announced just this month, a proposed moon-tourism venture.
Just shows that Reaganomics got it part right -- if you keep giving more and more money to a smaller and smaller sliver of society, they will find things to spend it on. Unfortunately, not cost efficient things that trickle down to smaller businesses, entrepreneurs, and working people. They spend it on ever more gigantic toys. "Oooh, Larry, let's build a billion dollar spaceship!" Great. Too bad we don't have a thousand small businesses spending that money on labor, rent, stock, and taxes instead.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Bring on the space pirates.
But, more seriously, I think the problem was when that treaty was signed, it took the resources of a nation-state to get someone into space. And now increasingly, it's private corporations doing this.
At some point, someone will actually land something on an asteroid or something and say "we own this now", so at some point, this really is going to be needed.
This life-ending Asteroid has been brought to you by Coca Cola.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
WTF?
Hehe you are right and that is why I posted my comment, I wanted discourse. It would be a bad thing to force space explorers to pay lip service for eternity to their parent worlds. I did not look at it from that perspective. So we are back to determining ownership by force and sovereignty.
I sure as hell hope the right minded people can find the will to colonize space, by force, if neccissary.
How about just using the good ol' 'Possession is 9/10ths of the law'?
Whats wrong with that? Not like we need to worry about space pirates just yet, and there are always legal avenues on Earth for pursuing criminals.
When you neeeeeeeeeeeed it?
Just curious. Why mess with a body the so affects our world?
Also, if you mine an asteroid are you then changing it's trajectory and potentially putting it into earth's path?
I'm more apt to be OK to mining other bodies in space, but the Moon, I'd want to see some serious studies done on the affect of mining on the moon effects on the earth.
A property right without a sovereign to back it up with arms if necessary leaves me at the mercy of anyone bigger than me who wants to take my claim away.
A property right with a sovereign to enforce it with arms if necessary may put that sovereign in violation of treaties it has already agreed to.
Even if it doesn't, such a sovereign would have to be willing to stand up against the combined military might countries who are willing to go to war to defend the "right of all mankind" to "own" the asteroid or whatever piece of property is at issue.
In other words, any country which says it will back a claim to "space real estate" is betting that the rest of the world won't care or at worst, will just whine about it but take no real action. Any person or company making such a claim is betting the same AND betting no other person or company will attempt to fight the claim by force.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What id you and a number of people wish to mine an asteroid, use the materials to create a new space station, and live independantly and separately from the nations of earth?
You do realize that this, assuming we are not wiped out before it happens, is the natural progression. Those of us who are unhappy with existing arrangements and affairs are going to want to leave. In fact, this may be the first time in history where such migrations have been nearly entirely infeasible. That will not last forever....and once it begins anew, it will take a LONG TIME to fill up just the locally earth bound space
Eventually exiting empires will simply be in the situation of King George when the colonies declared independance.
In a real way the Golden Path is the future, though, i doubt it really will require a sand worm god emporer to bring about, its natural human instinct to become disgruntled with the current order and want to leave and form new colonies.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
No, you were only the first publicly there.
I think there need to be a distinction between going there yourself and sending a robot to do it. Any person who is prepared to leave Earth and settle on an uninhabited celestial body can reasonably claim ownership of the area in which he settles. But if you build a robot to go and mine resources, and perhaps use some of those resources to build more robots, which can harvest even more resources, while you are staying back on Earth simply reaping the profits, then you shouldn't be able to claim ownership in the same way.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
to the best of my knowledge no government can claim ownership to any satellite body of the earth or solar system(UN accord?) however i believe a private person has claimed the moon as their own property in the '60s or '70s and has been selling an acre of moon for $20, people have already been buying land on the moon, like various space show celebrities.
this all comes down to who was the first individual to lay claim. and what laws and treaty actually existed before that person had lay claim. of course possession of actual property is a major hurdle.
I don't think ownership of celestial bodies is necessary to conduct business on them. We shouldn't write laws concerning the future, because we simply have no idea what space enterpreneurship will be like. Once we have reached a level where getting profit from outer space becomes possible, we can create our laws while having much more information available. TFA's claims that private space projects are limited by legal problems is bullshit, ambitious space activities are limited by financial and technological problems, not legal ones.
We planted a flag. That's how these things are done.
Later on, the shooting starts.
You can own an non-terrrestial property if
a) you occupy it for a significant length of time
or
b) you control its location
Failure of a) or b) for beyond a determined length of time shall result in loss of title.
http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-buy-land-on-the-moon/
I am there right now, so there.
Don't think so? Then you come up to the moon and prove me wrong.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty, seem to prohibit private ownership of space resources
No problem. When you get to your asteroid or whatever, you just declare yourself an independent space faring nation. You certainly have far more claim to that title than those who didn't get there. And you'll want to do that anyway, otherwise all of your profits will be taxed by the earthworms who think they are entitled to most of your profits and to tell you how to do things, even though they took mo risk and provided no service to you.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No different from the way it is here.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
If property rights are granted, does this mean we have no space left for .... whatever? ... Oh, its a god thing....
Or is this a property rights troll on everything?
Or maybe
At any rate can someone enforce their property right to the space between the ears of some politicians and who ever else....
Property is something that can only exist within a given jurisdiction.
Until a government claims jurisdiction over space, any one can go to space, establish a settlement and claim sovereignty and ownership.
Any attempt by a government to claim you're on their land would then be an act of war.
and the value of the rocks won't matter.
If you need it, and the material is very scarce. Its value will matter a great deal. Its value will become very high. This in relation to both its utility and scarcity.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
to get them to pay you NOT to give it to them?
Just have those asteroids in orbit and they can pay you anually to keep them from deorbiting onto their land.
It's win win win. :)
That would certainly be fun: " We down here in this deep gravity well declare war on you people up there among all of those rocks! "
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Trickle Down is just a theory.
The world has a precedence of going places, calling it theirs until someone kicks them out. go to the moon, mine it, call it yours and sell what you get to the highest bidder. No one gave early explorers permission to come here and claim it for what ever purpose.
We've owned it since we stuck our flag in it. If you don't think that's legally binding, talk to Christopher Columbus about it. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Columbus_Taking_Possession.jpg
Didn't Columbus claim the Americas in the name of Spain when he planted a flag? Did we not do the same when we planted a flag on the moon?
Y'all seem to have forgotten your history.
A long time ago people ventured out to discover new land with the intention of CLAIMING said land.
Once claimed (for the country, usually) the land could be developed under the laws of said country.
While I understand and agree with the proposition that it'd be unfair (or at least, unreasonable) for any country to claim an entire planet (at least, any planet in this system) but Asteroids and Various Other Miscellaneous Bodies should quite literally be UP FOR GRABS.
Of course you'd have to land on it, stake your claim, and maintain a permanent facility there. This can all be done with robots/remote-landers but it IS entirely achievable.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I call dibs on L5 (and a 100 km radius sphere centered on that point). I have an attractive LASER PRINTED DOCUMENT to prove it!
Our history of full of empires, merchants, new lands...
It basically boils down to what nation/institution is powerful enough to control the space property and whatever rules they impose on it.
It could be one powerful country that takes space exploration on its own. We could a bit more cordial and share the costs of exploration via some kind of international agency and then auction of any property rights.
We could even parallel something like the Antarctic Treaty which basically ban military activity on the continent.
No one can tell for sure how property rights will be handled in space, but our own history has ample examples from bureaucracy to genocide.
how about we solve the lunacy of the concept here first...
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
On second thought and one addendum to this question of ownership and moral obligation of the those who would colonize space. If we the people of earth are the ones to fund a colony, say voulentarily, or expidition that leads to colonization. Would we not deserve some return for founding the basis for such a diaspora? How about acknowledging that it was on earth that the technology to leave it was developed? If that technology was developed through a social system then that is different then if it was developed privately.
It stands to reason that it might be logical to expect an eventual return on an investmant if say we crowed sourced a colony. This of course leads back to that evil of indentured servitude. However it was used, and it did enable people to leave the old world to the new.
So then also to another degree it depends on how people get there. If they do it themselves, contractually, or through other means, such as a social program.
Also TheCarp your comment about the Golden Path does not fall on deaf ears, I have nothing to really add to it though.
Personally I wouldnt mind signing a contract with the devil to get off this rock, just for the chance at doing it. But at some point down the line I would hope my descendents would be treated fairly or have the opportunity to create their own society. Or share in the one that got them there successfully in the first place. I think this is were Star Treks idea of socialism comes into play.
...all your space are belong to us?
I think this is pretty much going to be a first come first serve kind of thing. I don't think anybody on earth should have the ability to declare property rights on something in space, unless they can walk right up to it and stick a flag in it (and, of course, the means to protect the flag). You can sit on earth and pay to have a bunch of lawyers claim rights on some space rock, but if someone else lands their spaceship on it you just look like a moron.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
F**ing Vikings.
But I bought an a few acres in the Sea of Tranquility.. SON OF A...
http://www.lunarregistry.com/land/index.shtml
You clearly haven't seen the new documentary about the early moon landings Iron Sky.
Korma: Good
Everyone is gonna want one, but someone will have the biggest and will own space.
Korma: Good
Why don't they just make an international organisation that says that humanity as a whole basically has property rights to bodies in space. To buy land in space you would need to pay this organisation to acquire the deeds, and the profit is then split equally amongst the member nations or used to fund research projects that benefit everyone, like how to combat climate change.
Companies should not own anything in space - they should license the use of it for a period of time.
The treaties should establish an organization that has authority to determine what is in the public interest and grant licenses accordingly.
Small problem. When the US planted the flag, it was to memorialize the event, not to claim the moon for anyone. The plaque with the flag says "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
Likely part of the reason that the Nixon ordered the US flag (vs the UN flag or both) planted was that he caved to congressional pressure. At the time, a rider attached to the house appropriations bill for space funding would have required the US flag be planted (under the justification that the US taxpayers funded it). Even though that rider did not survive to the senate, its mere existance was probably part of decision process.
Another problem is that although the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter pictures show that the flags appear to still be there, they are likely to be bleached out white (the surrender color).
So your cultural inheritance is worth nothing?
You were educated/indoctrinated - unless you claim to have grown from an embryo in the wilderness, independent of all other humans or any connection to the inhabitants of earch, and independent of earth's resources. That is a service that binds you for life.
If you used a rocket or any other device with a risk of failure in order to leave earth, then everyone on earth took a risk in letting you go.
If you're disturbing the orbits of particles in space, then everyone on earth is at risk that you, directly or indirectly, divert something that does harm to someone on earth.
BTW - when you get to MY asteroid or whatever, if you use my planets or asteroids or space gas or energy waves, I'll shoot you on sight, just as I would if I found you in my living room when I came home to my house in Texas, eating my steak, watching my TV and having your way with my wife, you worthless spaceworm.
However, give X0563511 some credit. He (she) has probably found himself or herself in the intellectual weeds of price elasticity and demand. It was expressed clumsily, but X0563511 has essentially forwarded the idea of an infinitely inelastic commodity (something so desirable that the demand pressure would not change no matter how high the price ascended.) Of course nothing is theoretically infinitely inelastic. Which is why price always matters. However, there are some things for which it matters far more than it does for others. And that (I think) is what X0563511 had in mind.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
In other words, the same rules as we have on Earth. A government claims a land because they want it and they have the means to defend it...
Sort of...but with a nasty twist. Whoever has control of large amounts of material in space and the ability to transport it back to earth will actually have the biggest guns. So if we let corporations loose in space without some viable means to prevent large chunks of rock hitting the Earth they will end up not just with more spending power than governments but with more military might than them too. I'm not sure this is a good environment for democracy to flourish.
We've owned it since we stuck our flag in it. If you don't think that's legally binding, talk to Christopher Columbus about it.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Columbus_Taking_Possession.jpg
Hmm, I think the Soviet Union first got their insignia on the moon with Luna 2 in 1959.
What now?
We could even parallel something like the Antarctic Treaty which basically ban military activity on the continent.
The Antarctic Treaty Article I
1. Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only. There shall be prohibited, inter alia, any measures of a military nature, such as the establishment of military bases and fortifications, the carrying out of military maneuvers, as well as the testing of any type of weapons.
2. The present Treaty shall not prevent the use of military personnel or equipment for scientific research or for any other peaceful purpose.
Article IV of the apparently "less well known" OuterSpace treaty...
States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.
The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. The use of any equipment or facility necessary for peaceful exploration of the moon and other celestial bodies shall also not be prohibited.
Strangely similar wouldn't you say? A quick read of a history book published after 1970 would probably indicate that the 1967 Outerspace Treaty was based on the 1959 Anarctic Treaty. http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/tos/tos.html
That's easy:
Stake your claim and state a value/price for your claim.
Your stated value/price constitutes a standing offer to sell at that price. Anyone can accept your offer to sell at any time and that becomes binding on you.
You can set any value/price you like and change the value/price for a small administative fee (e.g. 2% of the value/price) at any time.
Until you sell, you pay property tax on the stated value/price.
I'd love to claim ownership of Heavenly Bodies. In fact there are some here on earth that look quite interesting.
Makes as much sense. Nothing beyond a few stunts will happen in "private space". Absurdly ridiculous.
.
Yeah, it'll probably be something like a junkyard ship created by a small rag-tag team that gets up there privately and starts salvage operations on things like that left-over North Korean satellite that doesn't work anymore (supposedly) and all of our USA-ian interesting nonoperative satellites:
Salvage 1 has a ship made out of of a Texaco gasoline Semi-trailer with cement mixer as the capsule.
Where's Andy Griffith and Isaac Asimov when you need them? ;>)
WHO CAN OWN SPACE?
States that are parties to the Outer Space Treaty clearly cannot own territory in outer space, by the plain language of Article II and the legal definition of appropriation as to take possession. This is agreed to by most legal scholars#.
Non-signatory states would be able to appropriate space territory based on the international laws and precedents pertaining to sovereignty, which is defined in that context as supreme authority within a territory. The fundamental legal basis of a sovereignty claim is that of res nullius - a thing which has no owner, or which has been abandoned by an owner. In the context of space colonization, territory can be taken to mean the surface of a celestial body, or a particular location or defined area in space, and territory defines the identity of those people residing in it. Supreme authority in the legal sense, means to be the source of authority for the territory, with the ability to command, and be obeyed by, those people in the territory, the ability to defend the territory from internal and external threats, and the ability to represent the people of the territory in international legal affairs. Non-signatory states would have strong legal precedent for claims of sovereignty over the territories encompasses by space colonies under their authority.
Non-state actors, such individuals, religious groups, corporations, or international consortiums, are not parties to the Outer Space Treaty. Lacking an explicit ban on private property, legal experts generally agree that private ownership of space territory is not prohibited. Critics of private ownership point to Article VI, which states that treaty parties are responsible for authorizing and supervising private parties to ensure conformance with provisions of the treaty#. International law has long-accepted the legal doctrine expressio unius est exclusio alterius, that the presumption is that things not mentioned were excluded by deliberate choice.# Provided that private ownership is not a cover for national appropriation, it is not prohibited by the treaty.
Following the same expressio unius est exclusio alterius reasoning, absent a statute prohibiting it, the treaty does not prohibit states from recognizing private property rights of non-state entities. Private property rights arise either from English common (feudal) law, or from civil (Roman) law - the natural law principle of pedis possessio, use and occupation. Given the prohibition of sovereignty in Article II, common law property rights principles are not applicable to signatory states. From both a legal and practical perspective, property rights outer space will derive from civil law:
Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.#
- John Locke, 1690
Furthermore, there is no explicit treaty ban on parties from recognizing the property rights of those private owners. Therefore recognition and regulation of those property rights is the responsibility of the state or international organization of origin. Critics argue that recognition of property rights by a state amounts to de facto appropriation.# This argument is inconsistent with the civil law separation of the concepts of property rights and sovereignty.
I don't think one flag is sufficient to claim the whole moon, to be honest. A reasonably sized region around where it's at, probably.
We dont want the goverment to tell us who can do what on the internet (ITU) but we want the goverment to give out monopolies (US recognizes property rights)?
As long as its US who are doing the fucking of the universe then its ok?
Let's not sully space with Earth's laws that favour those who are already very wealthy and propertied.
Unless we want war on Earth for property in space we should not allow colonization of extraterrestrial properties untill there is one earth government that can decide who gets what. If a US and a Chinese company both want some golden comet, and both governments grant them the rights where do you think the battle gets fought? In outer space where it costs trillions to get a gun, or right here on earth? The people saying that ownership goes to whoever has most guns in space are just silly. Just destroy your competitors launch base on earth and you don't need to worry about anything else...
Furthermore, it would make far more sense to keep space development in the hands of the governement. Wouldn't it be far better if all the stuff we get from outer space could be delivered at a reasonable price to companies and citizens on earth, and the modest profit the government makes could be used to lower taxes? Of course that would mean some countries should drop their fetish about the holiness of capitalism. But those countries need to that anyway because that idea is destroying them faster and faster anyway.
Are you really telling us to use the law of gun and force rather than diplomacy ? With MAD still in effect ? Are you insane ?
Come on, people. Make him explain his stance, instead of letting him bluntly imply that "everyone but me is wrong". For christ's sake, he's barely even made that apparent.
Around 1980 the L5 Society defeated the Moon Treaty. Personal experience, got to testify before Congress.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain