COPYRIGHT/PROPERTY

New Statesman: Who owns the world?

Everything - from land, water and plant seeds to folk stories and football results - can now be claimed as private property. Andrew Simms on the new enclosures

You can buy a one-acre plot of land on the moon for £19.95. Slightly cheaper is Venus, which can be had for £14.25, plus registration fee. You can do this because, on 22 November 1980, Dennis M Hope went into the offices of San Francisco County and filed a declaration of ownership for both bodies. Just to be sure, he also filed with the federal government, the USSR and the UN General Assembly. He also declared ownership of the eight remaining planets and their moons. He set up a Lunar embassy and started to license others to sell plots. One, MoonEstates.com, describes itself as the UK's "only extraterrestrial land agents". For Mars, there is even a bill of rights to provide for mediation in the event of land disputes between settlers and a "native creature".

They can't be serious, can they? In 1967, the internationally agreed Outer Space Treaty forbade governments from claiming any celestial bodies as their property. But the committee that worded the treaty forgot to include private firms or individuals and, though the 1979 Moon Treaty would have prevented the exploitation of space for private profit, not enough countries signed. Opponents complained that it would bog down space exploration in "a 'common heritage of all mankind' morass".

This attempt to expand private property to outer space continues something that has been happening for hundreds of years: a move towards a single, restrictive approach to ownership and control

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