After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner—a woman from Spain’s soggy region of Galicia says she’s registered the star at a local notary public as being her property.
Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo on Friday she took the step in September after reading about an American man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our Solar System.
There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she added.
“There was no snag, I backed my claim legally, I am not stupid, I know the law. I did it but anyone else could have done it, it simply occurred to me first.”
[...]
Duran, who lives in the town of Salvaterra do Mino, said she now wants to slap a fee on everyone who uses the Sun and give half of the proceeds to the Spanish government and 20 per cent to the nation’s pension fund.
She would dedicate another 10 per cent to research, another 10 per cent to ending world hunger—and would keep the remaining 10 per cent herself.
Well, one of the common requirements for gaining ownership of something is to work on and improve the property. So once she builds a house on the sun or fixes its fuel problems, then I’ll perhaps acknowledge her claim.
You also need to be able to travel to your property to claim your stake and defend it against transgressions. This isn’t a small, privately owned section of a larger sovereign nation that will go ahead defend it for you because it’s in their best interest - she’s responsible for keeping us from using it. At the very least she needs to be able to fence it off before I’ll give her claim any credence.
I say let her keep her claim…. and then sue her for allowing her property to infringe on, damage (sunburn) and kill (drought) millions of people per year! When she gets done paying out of pocket for all of the damages, then we’ll talk about her getting paid for its “use’.
“I’m sorry.. it seems your property has caught fire. Since the fire is too big to extinguish, we’re going to let it burn out on its own. You *did* have it insured, right?”
I think this woman seriously needs help. We need to recognise her need. We should start by putting our collective hat around for donations to help this poor woman. Only when there is enough money donated can we…......
......stick her in a rocket and shove her a## off to the Sun.
Like others above all I could think was: has she any idea the liability cost of this ownership?
And as far as ‘ownership’ goes, has anyone ever claimed ownership of the Earth’s center yet?
If somebody does claim ownership of the center of the Earth we can help them visit it by making an extra long pole and using it to poke them into the ground.
I think that the various national borders go ‘all the way down’, with the understanding that if some tinpot dictator wants to go and claim it as theirs then they are damn well invited to go and plant a flag.
