DailyDirt: Imagine There's No Countries...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Dec 30th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

If you've caught up on the Techdirt podcasts, you might have heard a brief mention of how Antarctica is split up and a bit of discussion on the possible ownership of the moon. The ownership of new lands will likely become a more important issue as the access to various inhospitable locations increases. Here are just a few links on claiming territories.

The United Nations Outer Space Treaty states that no nation can claim ownership over the moon. However, there's some ambiguity in the treaty that might allow for private ownership, and there are already some people trying to stake claims -- with millions of acres of lunar property already bought/sold. [url]
The ownership of land in Antarctica is a bit tricky and governed by the Antarctic Treaty which sets up the continent as a scientific reserve. Seven countries have claimed parts of Antarctica, with overlapping territories claimed by the United Kingdom, Chile and Argentina. [url]
Denmark is claiming to own about half a million square miles of the North Pole (about 20 times the geographic size of the current Denmark) -- after spending over a decade and $50 million in research to support its claim to the UN. Five countries have a claim to parts of the North Pole: the US, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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Filed Under: antarctica, geography, moon, north pole, south pole, space, space exploration, territory, treaties, united nations

14 Comments

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Mason Wheeler (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:04pm

with overlapping territories claimed by the United Kingdom ... and Argentina.

Mark my words, this will not end well. :P
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- John Fenderson (profile), 31 Dec 2014 @ 8:46am
  
  Re:
  My thought exactly. The situation is fine right now because there's nothing of real economic value to be had in Antarctica -- but economics can change overnight. The minute that the "land" becomes valuable is the minute the situation is no longer fine.
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  - Mason Wheeler (profile), 31 Dec 2014 @ 10:21am
    
    Re: Re:
    Oh, but it's so much worse than that. Have you ever been to Argentina? I have, and "las Malvinas" (the Falkland Islands) is still a thing that the average citizen cares about, passionately, even thirty years later. (Passionately and somewhat ignorantly. I once had a little kid, maybe 10 years old, come up to me begging for money because "my papi died in las Malvinas." This was about 10 years ago, which would have placed the date of the kid's father's death about 10 years before his poor, unfortunate son was born! And yet he clearly expected people to fall for it.)
    
    You can see posters on the sides of buildings downtown saying "Las Malvinas were, are, and will be Argentina's!" And the common man on the street firmly believes that the UK invaded the islands and massacred the Argentine civilians living there, and historical accuracy be damned. There's a cultural hatred for all things England down there that's hard to draw a parallel to for an American audience. Maybe the national feeling of anger against Arab terrorists for a few weeks, when 9/11 briefly brought us (mostly) all together, but this is something that's endured for decades.
    
    I was there when Argentina lost to England in a World Cup match. It as not pretty, and in fact that was probably my single scariest moment living there. A big group of teens, maybe 10 or so, came up and surrounded me and a friend of mine, angrily asking if we were from England. Luckily, when we responded that no, we're Americans, their mood improved and they started laughing and congratulating us on Team USA's recent good performance in another match. (As if we had anything to do with that?) But it could have gotten real ugly.
    
    So yeah. Should another territorial dispute with England actually turn into something real... it would be a big mess.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2014 @ 12:08pm
    
    Re: Re:
    If it's still available Payne Harrison's novel Thunder Of Eurabus involves this plot. He's no Tom Clancy, but it's still a plausible scenario.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:15pm

anyone sue Denmark yet?
Due to coastal flooding for allowing the ice to melt?
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:27pm

If no nation can own the moon, then the only way private ownership can be enforced is through private security. Since no country would have jurisdiction to apply its laws over any part of the moon, private ownership would be on a "might makes right" basis.
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PIGS ARE FLYIN, 30 Dec 2014 @ 5:30pm

i own it all
i made my own treaty called

H.O.M.E.R.

home of meaningful extraterrestrial regions
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steell (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 6:24pm

You can only own that which you can hold against others.
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PIGS ARE FLYIN, 30 Dec 2014 @ 7:19pm

@5
and if the moons made a cheese what happens when i squeeze it
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 8:29pm

it will all come down to military might and which countries are stupid enough to go to war over this
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Dec 2014 @ 8:45pm

countries = illusion
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got_runs? (profile), 30 Dec 2014 @ 10:56pm

Got a whole roll of treaty next to the toilet.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2014 @ 9:29am

Get there first
I think the US needs to drop these wild ideas of going to Mars, and go back to the moon. Set up a permanent shop, and keep off all comers.

We could easily transport linkable "shipping container" segments to create a lunar city. We'd have to be careful about lunar dust, though. Since there is no erosion on the moon, lunar dust tends to have sharp points, which would be ground down on earth.

And, best of all, if there is an emergency, the moon is only three days away, not months.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Dec 2014 @ 9:35am

Off course, thanks to the XKCD rule, we already know who will end up owning both poles: https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ (and Mars: https://what-if.xkcd.com/54/ , everyone else is free to migrate to the moon).
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