- More than 2.5 million people from 180 countries have
bought property on the Moon and Mars in sales that reached $1 million last
year. The scheme is bogus, legal scholars argue, but business is booming
and futurists have been forced to ponder the fate of celestial property
rights.
-
- Meanwhile, the "Head Cheese" of the whole shebang
asserted last week that his Galactic Government flag will be planted on
the Moon by the end of this year.
-
- The pronouncements are bold. The revenue is real. And
a lunar land grab -- however dubious it may be -- is well underway.
-
- Most of the buyers are individuals who are convinced
that $19.99 plus shipping and handling will secure them a building site
on another world. Some 1,300 corporations, many hoping for otherworldly
tax status, are also said to be among the clients. Sales of Martian real
estate have recently begun and other worlds are also available.
-
- Analysts who say the sales are not on solid legal footing
also think it all foretells court battles that loom in the cosmic frontier,
especially now that U.S. President George W. Bush says we "human beings
are headed into the cosmos."
-
- It's also the sort of thing that could lead to the first
cosmic warfare.
-
- Big money
-
- The out-of-this-world commerce is conducted mostly over
the Internet and orchestrated chiefly by one company, Lunar Embassy (lunarembassy.com),
whose founder insists he owns the Moon and all the planets in the solar
system except Earth.
-
- The claim is considered absurd by several legal analysts,
who say a 1967 international treaty forbids ownership of property beyond
Earth.
-
- "You should not expect to have paid for any valid
legal title to a plot in outer space, just for a nice piece of paper to
stick on your wall," says Frans von der Dunk, a space law expert at
Leiden University in The Netherlands.
-
- Lunar Embassy's founder, Dennis Hope, asserts he's on
firm legal ground -- regardless of the world in question. He spent $70,000
last year in legal fees to defend his company and chase off competition
that he calls copycats. According to other news reports, competing web
sites have been forced to shut down based on copyright violations, not
directly because of property ownership claims.
-
- "We're not trying to fool anybody about anything,"
Hope said. "The properties we sell are as legitimate as any property
you buy anywhere on this planet."
-
- At least two competitors disagree.
-
- Lunar Registry (lunarregistry.com) does not claim to
own the Moon. And it says it is "aware that some companies are lying
to consumers about their legal rights to sell property on the Moon."
Yet Lunar Registry has "a program through which you, your family,
or your business enterprise can legally claim ownership of property on
the Moon." Proceeds will be pooled "in order to create the investment
capital required to occupy and develop the Moon."
-
- Another outfit, called Buyuranus.com, takes a potty-humor
approach to selling parcels of the outer planet with the arguably unfortunate
name. The enterprise is serious, however, about accepting your credit card.
-
- Plant the flag
-
- In a telephone interview last week, Hope, the self-proclaimed
Head Cheese of the Lunar Embassy, revealed his latest plan to attempt to
secure extraterrestrial ownership. The flags of his Lunar Embassy and his
nascent Galactic Government will be planted on the Moon by the end of 2004,
he said.
-
- "We believe it will change the history of this world,"
Hope said. "Sometime this year, the Lunar Embassy will be on the Moon.
Our representative will then turn to a video camera and read a prepared
statement validating our claim of ownership."
-
- There are no known manned missions currently planned
to reach the Moon this year or anytime soon. Other space experts expressed
serious doubt any such mission would occur. So I asked Hope what spacecraft
his company would employ.
-
- "I'm not at liberty to discuss the technical aspects
of the craft at this point," he said.
-
- Seeds of cosmic commerce
-
- The idea for selling lunar property came to Dennis Hope
in 1980. He recalled the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which
stipulates that no government can own extraterrestrial property. But as
Hope says, "it neglected to mention individuals or corporations."
-
- He used that loophole, as he calls it, to snap up to
the Moon and the eight other planets and their natural satellites in 1980.
-
- Hope filed papers with a U.S. governmental office for
claim registries in San Francisco. He then informed the General Assembly
of the United Nations and the governments of Russian and the United States.
None responded, and Hope takes that as proof his claim is valid. He followed
up with a U.S. copyright registration.
-
- Hope also cites the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, which
through 1986 allowed an individual to claim property by occupying and improving
it. Yet in some countries, Hope contends, not even occupation is necessary
to homestead some land.
-
- "With the chaotic aspect of rules, he said, "we
just created our own rules."
-
- Raging discussion
-
- Von der Dunk, the Leiden University law expert, is also
co-director of the International Institute of Space Law (IISL). He said
a "discussion is raging" within the IISL as well as the International
Astronautical Federation over how to handle claims like Lunar Embassy's.
-
- To clarify the 1967 UN treaty, the IISL is working to
establish explicit international legal language that would render "null
and void" any ownership claim of a celestial body. That document is
due out later this year. The language, other scholars say, represents what
many think is already codified into international law by years of interpretations
of the 1967 treaty.
-
- So legally, where does that leave the sale of extraterrestrial
property?
-
- "Whether that means it's fraud and such a claim
is null and void under national law, would basically be up to any national
legal system to determine," von der Dunk said. "It does mean,
however, that under international law the U.S. government should unequivocally
make clear that these practices are not based on any sound legal premise."
-
- Hope alternately deflects criticism and defends himself
vigorously. He says what might sound like anger -- he speaks heatedly about
his critics -- is actually just enthusiasm. In the Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) on the Lunar Embassy web site, the first question is, "How do
I know this is not a fraud?"
-
- Elsewhere in the FAQ, and on the printed deed a customer
receives, Lunar Embassy employs the word "novel" to describe
its products. The word was suggest by lawyers 24 years ago, according to
the FAQ, to "help avoid any frivolous lawsuits from a foreign country."
-
- (The words "novel" and "novelty"
are employed by star-naming businesses as a way to avoid the impression
that their sales involve official products.)
-
- Hope brushed off a question about the employment of "novel"
as a form of legal defense. "It's just a word," he said, delving
into its dictionary definition as describing something new and unusual.
-
- 'Wonderfully profitable'
-
- One thing no one argues about is that Lunar Embassy has
developed into a "wonderfully profitable program," as the company's
promotional materials state in seeking "ambassadors" to serve
as sales agents in other countries.
-
- Every day hundreds of people fork over about $30 for
1-acre slices of the Moon and Mars. (Prices are going up: For roughly the
same amount, prior to 2001, you could get 17,700 acres.) The cost includes
shipping and handling of a deed, a map, and the lunar or Martian "Constitution
and Bill of Rights," all printed on simulated parchment.
-
- With the help of several affiliated web sites around
the world, Lunar Embassy has over the years sold 410 million acres on the
Moon -- a fraction of what's available. Some 1,500 lunar acres are bought
each day, Hope said, many in 2- or 3-acre parcels. Revenue is nearly double
what it was in 2000.
-
- Business has picked up "tremendously" of late,
as it typically does when there are high-profile space missions like the
rovers now on Mars.
-
- Charging for sunlight
-
- In a crafty stunt designed to "expose the phony
extraterrestrial real estate industry," British legal scholar Virgiliu
Pop declared in 2001 that he owns the Sun and can charge the "owners"
of other solar system bodies for the solar energy they receive.
-
- Pop has written several papers on space property rights
and is a member of the IISL.
-
- "The Lunar Embassy does not own the Moon, hence
it cannot sell it," Pop said in an e-mail interview. "If you
still believe you can actually own the Moon by buying it from the Lunar
Embassy, then you will have to pay me utilities fees for the Sun that I
own as much (or as little) as Mr. Hope owns the Moon."
-
- One precedent Pop draws on involves the Masai tribe in
Africa, which "has a similar legal claim over all the cows in the
world, yet in reality, people all over the world continue to buy and sell
cattle without involving the Masai. What I dispute here is the 'it is mine
because I say so' approach."
-
- A cornerstone of Lunar Embassy's claims -- the absence
of governmental protest -- is irrelevant, Pop argues, because no protest
or response was to be expected "with such trivial claim" in light
of accepted international law.
-
- Pop further contends that Dennis Hope's quest, which
began in 1980, came too late. "A lunar claim was lodged in Chile back
in 1953," Pop says, "and a Declaration of Lunar Ownership was
issued by the city of Geneva, Ohio, back in 1966."
-
- So why don't governments put a stop to all this?
-
- "Perhaps -- and this is my opinion, not the government's
-- this is because the government is concerned right now with more important
issues," Pop said. "Yet, I hope one day the government will pay
attention to the Lunar Embassy's antics."
-
- Moon squatting
-
- Hope has no patience with legal opinion.
-
- If other disagree with his justifications, "that's
their decision," he said. "I don't care."
-
- Meanwhile, his plan to counter other claims, past or
present, is to squat. By sending an emissary to the Moon, he figures to
solidify his ownership rights. When I expressed doubt about his ability
to put someone on the lunar surface this year, he said: "If we don't
do it, then everything I told you is fabricated." He quickly backtracked.
"It isn't fabricated," he said, but rather it would just mean
there had been a technical problem.
-
- Assuming Lunar Embassy succeeds at putting people on
the Moon at some point, governments would surely take notice. Conversely,
if President Bush's new space vision leads to the United States setting
up a lunar base, as planned, that base would inevitably sit on land that
the Lunar Embassy claims to own. What would Hope do?
-
- He said he is "in the process of setting up talks
with Bush" to lease to the government 30,000 lunar acres for 200 years.
-
- Hope is crafty about stating things in a manner that
lends credibility to his cause. On his web site, for example, he writes
that "the Lunar Embassy entered into a contractual agreement with
TransOrbital Inc., to carry our Declaration of Ownership to the Moon along
with their mission."
-
- The TranOrbital mission, called Trailblazer, in fact
is selling space for documents to anyone with a credit card. TransOrbital's
President, Dennis Laurie, said Lunar Embassy has no special arrangement
beyond what you, I or anyone can easily make by filling out a form on the
TransOrbital web site (transorbital.net).
-
- The Trailblazer mission will not carry humans.
-
- Looming clash?
-
- Short of going to war with the rest of the world, Lunar
Embassy's squatting plans might not work, according to Sa'id Mosteshar,
a space law expert and principal partner in the law firm Mosteshar Mackenzie,
based in San Diego, California.
-
- Mosteshar says no individual can claim ownership of any
piece of space -- or Earth -- without the support of a nation to defend
that right. And, since the 1967 UN treaty forbade nations from owning any
piece of space, the law simply does not support Lunar Embassy's plans.
-
- Lunar Embassy does not plan to work entirely within terrestrial
law anyway.
-
- Hope recently formed a Galactic Government (he is its
president) designed to create laws for societies that will eventually colonize
the Moon and planets. A vote on these laws is to be held soon, he said.
-
- If Hope or other members of the Galactic Government try
to settle the Moon, "we can only assess the effectiveness of that
kind of move by reference to our own system of law," Mosteshar said.
"He would have to fight for his rights. Such rights as he might claim
would not be recognized here on Earth."
-
- In essence, any person or entity trying to physically
settle and govern the Moon could start the first space war, if any government
or coalition of nations back home decided to challenge the move.
-
- Projecting fantasy
-
- In the end, most legal experts and space policy analysts
are confident, buyers of Lunar Embassy plots -- or their heirs -- will
get nothing.
-
- Yet what appears to be an ultimately inevitable argument
is in its nascent stages, fueled both by Dennis Hope and by President Bush's
recently announced plan to set up a permanent Moon base and then send people
to Mars.
-
- After all, can the nations of Earth really govern the
heavens? And how might current law change when people actually get out
there? Might individuals one day purchase suburban land beyond Earth in
a legally undisputed manner? And if so, what entity or entities will recognize
and protect their title?
-
- Steve Durst is hedging his bets. He's got four deeds
to lunar property bought from different sellers. He picked up his first
one "with a chuckle" in Berkeley in 1970 from "a woman dressed
in a silver Moon suit."
-
- As director of the Lunar Enterprise Corporation and editor
of Space Age Publishing, Durst does not really think any of the deeds are
valid. But he is a "great believer" in the right of individuals
to own property on the Moon.
-
- "I see them mostly as novelties, but symbolic novelties"
he said.
-
- Durst respects Dennis Hope for his marketing prowess
and for "doing a great service to the process of space education and
commerce and the legal question it raises." Durst also likes Hope
as a person, but he does not agree that Hope owns the Moon or other planets.
Nor does he believe Lunar Embassy will put a person on the lunar surface
this year.
-
- "If he's really convinced himself to a high degree
that he owns the Moon, then that fantasy probably projects itself into
other things" like getting a person on the Moon, Durst told me, adding
that perhaps that bold expectation is "no more outlandish than saying
he owns the Moon."
-
- Black eye
-
- Durst is one of many analysts who think the need for
serious discussions about extraterrestrial property rights is growing urgent.
-
- "The concept of property rights in space is important,"
said Brain Chase, executive director of the National Space Society, which
supports the privatization of space exploration. "As we start to settle
the solar system the property rights issue is a critical debate we're going
to have to have."
-
- That's not to say Chase is enthusiastic about having
a Head Cheese fuel the discussion.
-
- "I'm not sure the Lunar Embassy is the right ambassador
for the job," Chase said. He worries that the company's sales of celestial
property may give the whole effort to expand space exploration "more
of a black eye than anything else."
-
- This article is part of SPACE.com's weekly Mystery Monday
series.
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- Copyright © 2004 SPACE.com.
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