From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sun Jun 25 2000 - 09:39:15 MDT
In a message dated 6/23/00 9:35:25 AM Central Daylight Time,
retroman@turbont.net writes:
> The big problem with the Outer Space Treaty and the Moon Treaty is that they
> violate a principle of international law called 'dereliction of
sovereignty',
>
> whereas a claimant to sovereign power over some piece of property must
> maintain
> some sort of presence or record of regular visitation and maintenance.
This
> is
> the legal basis for the claims of sovereignty that the Prince of Sealand
> made to
> support his taking over that gun platform, in that it was outside the
> territorial waters of the UK, and that the UK maintained no presence and
> made no
> visitations or maintenance upon the site on an annual basis. It is this
> principle that requires that all islands around the world that are not
> within
> the territorial boundaries of some other land must be visited at least
once
> a
> year by representatives of the sovereign power that claims them. The US
> Coast
> Guard does this function with all islands the US claims which are
> uninhabited.
>
> When it comes to space, this obviously brings up an issue of visitation.
One
> might claim that an automated robot might possibly count as a 'visitation'
> or
> 'presence', but robots are not citizens and cannot carry power of attorney
> or
> diplomatic status (though there is the case of a king appointing his horse
> to
> cabinet or some such drivel). This clearly opens up the possibility that
> these
> treaties have no force under international law due to their violation of
the
> principle of dereliction of sovereignty.
It's turned out that I don't have time to get into this this weekend. Let me
highly commend to folks interested in this subject the Archimedes Institute's
website:
http://www.permanent.com/archimedes/
All of the space treaties can be accessed there and you can read about the
"claims registry" system they're attempting to implement. I spent some time
reading and thinking about this system last year and think it's pretty
robust. Hopefully, I'll have some time to converse about this subject some
more at another time, because I think it is absolutely key to progress in
expanding off Earth.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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