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Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

economist.com

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Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#61

Post by elihu »

dd36 wrote: post #30
whatshisface wrote: post #5

Law doesn't come from (or shouldn't come from) unqualified legislators guessing about what the future will be like and what problems will be there. Law comes from when somebody has a grievance against somebody else, and society steps in to resolve it. Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise,…

Is it much different than the laws of the sea? Sometimes laws spur innovation. If the law is: first one to establish a base owns it then there will be a lot of effort put into establishing a base.

Then the question becomes: what counts as a "base" and how much of the surrounding land or other relevant resources are deemed to belong to the base?

Personally, I think land ownership claims around unmanned probes, rovers, and stationary facilities should be kept small, and claims around manned homesteads should not be more than about a mile radius or so, probably less. In the beginning, I think it's good to have policies that encourage settlements with different owners to be located close together, without anyone becoming a real-estate baron. The best land should go to those who have the ability to actually use it, not real-estate speculators.

See also: https://xkcd.com/2125/ as an example of how land claims shouldn't work.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#62

Post by chromeguy66 »

whatshisface wrote: post #5

Law doesn't come from (or shouldn't come from) unqualified legislators guessing about what the future will be like and what problems will be there. Law comes from when somebody has a grievance against somebody else, and society steps in to resolve it. Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise,…

This seems like the classic case of common law against civil law.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#63

Post by chromeguy66 »

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #48
L_226 wrote: post #42

Pretty sure as soon as there is permanent human habitation in space, any "Space Law" as determined by Earth lawyers is going to become wishful thinking really quickly. Good luck trying to enforce mining rights or even copyright on Ceres, using Earth law.

Its pretty easy to enforce if the disputes are between two parties that are at all Earth based. There will be a significant period of permanent habitation before there is self sustaining habitation. And you really cant afford to tell earth to screw off until you're self sufficient.

I hope you won't be the lawyer who delays a food shipment to mars/moon because of some petty copyright dispute.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#64

Post by m463 »

JoeSamoa wrote: post #58
crsv wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise, and then wrote laws banning and permitting things that they thought would lead to trouble? There is no way somebody back then could predict which situations would lead to trouble decades later. You mean like everyone who's talking about AI policy right…

There have been people who have predicted exactly the direction we are headed like Richard Stallman. I think though that the number of people with that kind of vision and foresight are few.

It might be interesting to see what RMS is predicting right now.

I have a friend who participates in superforecasting. I should pay more attention.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#65

Post by m463 »

whatshisface wrote: post #5

Law doesn't come from (or shouldn't come from) unqualified legislators guessing about what the future will be like and what problems will be there. Law comes from when somebody has a grievance against somebody else, and society steps in to resolve it. Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise,…

> let judges stretch earth law (property rights, whatever)

Time to churn out those cornucopia machines.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#66

Post by pixl97 »

tempsolution wrote: post #18

Yeah as if Earth doesn't have any other problems right now than putting million of super-rich people into space lol. What a stupid waste of time and resources. Maybe there should be some laws indeed for Earth orbit, for instance, banning densely populated, orbiting space craft, for starters. Or fixing or problems on Earth before spending hundreds of billions on useless space projects. We might not be around long enou…

Yesterday is the time. I keep seeing these 'we must do X here first' posts and they are all built on the same bad lines of thinking. We are never going to solve our problems here on earth sufficiently, that's just how the human condition works. That said as we find new challenges we are great at creating solutions. Trying to say space is a waste of resources is silly, when space is filled with them, and you dont have to worry about many kind of pollution in space. Millions of metric tons of heavy metals that require huge amounts of ecological damage to mine on earth could be refined in space and dropped on earth for example.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#67

Post by pixl97 »

martamoreno2 wrote: post #59
simonh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ban stuff because.... well, because bah humbug. Humanity can apparently only do one thing at a time. Also you get to decide what people should or shouldn't be allowed to do, and when. Nice.

Interesting comment. So your style of commenting consists of creating arbitrary statements that were not present in other people's comments, ignoring the valid claims they had and sprinkling it with a touch of stupidity of your own? Anyone who thinks populating space and space governance at this point in time should be a priority, obviously has no idea about where our planet is heading right now. And judging by the u…

You're doing the same silly thinking. Want to 'save the earth's, why not divert the trillions and trillions we waste on military spending? The billions we spend in space have and will pay off a thousand fold.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#68

Post by dd36 »

elihu wrote: post #61
dd36 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it much different than the laws of the sea? Sometimes laws spur innovation. If the law is: first one to establish a base owns it then there will be a lot of effort put into establishing a base.

Then the question becomes: what counts as a "base" and how much of the surrounding land or other relevant resources are deemed to belong to the base? Personally, I think land ownership claims around unmanned probes, rovers, and stationary facilities should be kept small, and claims around manned homesteads should not be more than about a mile radius or so, probably less. In the beginning, I think it's good to have po…

Yea, I would say continuous occupation by natural persons for a certain amount of time.

Re: Space law is inadequate for the boom in human activity there

#69

Post by fuzzfactor »

dd36 wrote: post #30
whatshisface wrote: post #5

Law doesn't come from (or shouldn't come from) unqualified legislators guessing about what the future will be like and what problems will be there. Law comes from when somebody has a grievance against somebody else, and society steps in to resolve it. Could you imagine how bad it would be if Congress got excited about the potential for internet crime in 1985, tried to guess the form of the problems that would arise,…

Is it much different than the laws of the sea? Sometimes laws spur innovation. If the law is: first one to establish a base owns it then there will be a lot of effort put into establishing a base.

According to one of the earliest space lawyers in the '80's, maritime law is largely the foundation.
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