Spaniard sues eBay over right to sell the Sun A Spanish woman has filed a lawsuit against eBay for the right to sell the Sun, El Mundo reports. Galician star-vendor Ángeles Durán is claiming €10,000 from the world's favourite tat bazaar after it blocked her attempts to offload bits of our solar system's nuclear furnace on eBay's Spanish and Italian tentacles. According …
She's persistent, she's also registered 24 million combinations of DTMF tones...
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/11/26/galicia/1290779270.html
About suing her for sunburn, a local newspaper says that a Manual Sieira from nearby Ribiera was taking legal action against Maria Ángeles because the Sun destroys the ozone layer and caused him red eyes and sunburn. "I went to A&E, I've got the photos to prove it. I will try to arrive at an out-of-court settlement with her or I'll take her to court, I don't mind paying 1000 euros for a solicitor."
In the same article Maria Ángeles replies, "People think they can claim compensation off me but the Sun is not responsible for causing cancer, it's the pollution that destroys the ozone layer. Using their logic, I could claim compensation off them because of the food they eat or they were out in the heat. I believe that people lack basic legal knowledge because things are not like that."
The article goes off on a tangent with the eBay story but comes back to Manual saying that he's given up his legal action because his solicitor advised him that the light from the Sun takes 1000 years to get to the Earth and as Maria Ángeles only became the owner of the Sun five years ago she is not responsible for anything that the Sun may or may not have done before that so any case against her is unwinnable. (That'll be the easiest 1000 euros he's made.)
http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/galicia/2015/06/04/duena-sol-me-quieren-demandar-quemaduras-culpa-ozono/0003_201506G4P12991.htm
Please El Reg, we need a double facepalm icon.
his solicitor advised him that the light from the Sun takes 1000 years to get to the Earth
If nothing else, that would demonstrate that the solicitor is clueless...
Right. The estimates I've seen range from1 to 30 mya for photons to get from the core to the photosphere. Then, of course, it's only on the order of 8 minutes to get here. As usual, the real delay is in packaging and handling, not manufacture or transport.
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maybe, but if you get a judge that follows the law by the letter, ebay may have to sue the notar to end the stupid joke
That's not how a notary works or what they do.
In fact the wording in the article is slightly misleading. You don't obtain documents from a notary. You make documents themselves, and take them to a notary. The notary is an official who signs and dates the document, like a witness; their stamp indicates only that the document existed in a certain form at a certain time. Getting a document notarised doesn't mean that what it says is true, and is in no way makes its contents binding on the courts or anyone else.
If this woman presents herself to the legal system, it will treat the notarised document as a forged instrument created in pursuit of a fraud, and the fact that it is notarised will not help her in any way.
Well, at least in the US (I saw a case on one of the numerous TV court shows about this kind of thing), you can sell a deed or title and any and all rights that deed or title gives you. Note "any and all rights" may mean no rights at all. If you claim the deed or title actually confers any rights and it doesn't you've commited fraud. If you're careful to not make any claims, you're merely a huge scumbag but technically not a fraudster. Or possibly misinformed or (probably in this case) crazy, if you honestly thought you had clear title to something but actually didn't. (In the court case, the person was somewhat greasy, the deed was some 1800's common-law "land in the middle of the desert" sort of deed he had ininherited, that may or may not have still conferred any rights whatsoever, and he traded it for a car knowing this. The judge made him undo the deal.)
In other words, EBay should definitely block any claims that someone is selling the sun since they are fraud, but she may be within her right to sell a deed to the sun as long as she doesn't claim it gives her clear title or anything... although hopefully nobody will be dumb enough to bid on it.
That said, I think this is in the same category as the people that were selling "exactly what you see in the photo", showed a photo of a Playstation or XBox box, and let people bid an empty cardboard box up to $1000 or whatever. Hopefully, the Spanish court will not clock EBay for blocking this, and hopefully will charge this crazy old bat EBay's legal fees. edit: Excuse me, I mean crazy allegedly old bat.
According to Matt Damon (and we must believe Hollywood), the Sun is "international waters" so no one owns her. That would make selling her some version of fraud.
However ... if the nice Spanish loon lady *did* sell me the Sun or a part thereof could I charge the UK government and various other agencies for the use of my solar power? Them, householders and anyone using a solar-powered charger?
Could I charge *farmers* for using my energy to power their crops?
And everyone else for using it to see with?
And the planet, Earth, for using my gravity?
Lets see, in say 50 years when we can be arsed to send man back and colonise it, how many of those "deeds" are actually A: legal and B: honoured...
Almost certainly none but the guy who claimed the moon back in 1980 has made a mint selling it off.
See
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2654045/Id-buy-moon-Former-car-salesman-claims-owns-Earths-satellite-10million-selling-pieces-lunar-landscape-buyers-include-Tom-Cruise-Tom-Hanks-George-Lucas.html
But the point was if ebay allows the selling of these certificates for bits of the moon why ban some other loony/entrepeneur from claiming and selling bits of the sun through their site.
My sister bought the right to name a star after her daughter or maybe it was the entire star for her daughter. She seriously thought it was such a pretty, magical and lovely gift.
I didn't have the heart to tell her.
I "named a star" for my wife once but we both knew how utterly bogus the pretty certificate was. It was just a "I think you're worth it and wish I could really do this" type of gesture.
On various birthday's I also gave her a comet, the nebula that used to be called "the Rosette Nebula" and a galaxy once called "M51". All three are now named after my wife.
No, I don't think anyone else uses our nomenclature for those objects but she thought the gesture was cute.
The "traditional" method is to sell a "quit claim", where one person relinquishes to another all the rights he has to whatever it is he is selling. And, of course, "all the rights" he had are usually "none".
The problem with selling bits of the Sun, even that way, is...how do define "surface"? It's gas all the way through.
The problem with selling bits of the Sun, even that way, is...how do define "surface"? It's gas all the way through
I'd assume she would sell plots which are areas on the visible surface of the Sun with rights to the sub-surface volume of those areas projected to the centre of the Sun. I'd think she should be OK with maintaining the uniqueness of each plot by using Carrington heliographic coordinates which define a longitude which rotates with a period approximating the mean solar rotational rate and has a prime meridian defined to coincide with the central meridian of the Sun (as seen from Earth) at a specific time on 9 November 1853
See
http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095551605
This being one of the co-ordinate systems used to study solar activity
see
http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/grid/iau/extra/local_copy/coordinates.pdf
The advantage of this system being its attempt to incorporate the Sun's rotation.
>The problem with selling bits of the Sun, even that way, is...how do define "surface"? It's gas all the way through
It's plasma, so it cannot be said to have a 'surface', since electron repulsion is responsible for the solidity of ordinary matter. Furthermore, since the Heliosphere extends beyond the orbit of ex-planet Pluto, ownership of the Sun includes ownership of the Earth and all its contents, including Tarzan-calls.
The visible surface of the Sun - the photosphere - is a layer about 100 km thick.
see
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/surface.shtml
Hence it is perfectly possible to uniquely identify volumes consisting of an area on the visible surface projected towards the centre of the Sun without allowing that volume to encompass other bodies in the solar system. The areas can be defined using Carrington heliographic coordinates. If this was approximately a square area then the volume would be a square pyramid with the point at the centre of the Sun.
For any particular choice for the distance between the visible surface and the centre of the Sun adjacent plots would be uniquely defined and the fact that the top area was within the photosphere would restrict how far from the Sun the volume could extend. This would be no different from someone (or a nation) owning an area of the earth described by latitude and longitude co-ordinates and all the airspace above that area and rights to all minerals below the surface from that area to the centre of the earth.
Let me see if I'm following: You think that eBay are "total utter thieving scum", so instead of booting fraudsters out of their site, you want the courts to oblige eBay to permit them to operate with impunity, so that some day in the future one might rip you off?
I fail to see any way in which your desired outcome a) benefits you or b) harms eBay, and in fact it appears to benefit eBay and harm you, so I don't see why you desire it.
I fail to see any way in which your desired outcome a) benefits you or b) harms eBay, and in fact it appears to benefit eBay and harm you, so I don't see why you desire it.
For the sake of argument:1 I don't use eBay, so that outcome can't harm me. If eBay is forced to permit more auctions of useless, bogus products, or otherwise constrained from maintaining the quality (such as it is) of their marketplace, then that lowers the average quality of the products available in their market, and makes it more difficult for customers to find desirable products. That likely harms eBay.
Now, that said, I can't say I'm in favor of allowing more fraud on eBay - on principle. But it's not difficult to construct an economic argument in favor of the plaintiff.
1There is no better or more noble motive.
1. How is she going to manage "Buyer collection only" ?
2. She can't sell it by PayPal, because she won't be able to deliver it by a tracked service - the buyer will be able to make a "Where's my celestial body ?" claim and she will automatically lose.
3. Wrapping it might be a problem.
Ha! I own the multiverse, you still owe me rent for your universe.
Ebay are on a sticky wicket by claimng that the Sun is not tangible - it has mass which affects every body in the solar system, it will burn you if you get too close , it will blind you if you stare at it and from spectroscopic analysis we know what elements it is made of.
However your claim for rent for the multiverse will have to wait until someone proves that such a thing actually exists.
"Tangible" means that you can touch it - it's from the Latin.
A tenner says you can't..
It can certainly touch you just like fire can - just go outside on a hot day and feel the photons on your skin that it is throwing at you.
Of course to really touch it you have to go up close, eg by being in a rocket fired into the sun. I wouldn't recommend it but I'm pretty sure you would feel it before you died.
"Tangible" means that you can touch it - it's from the Latin.
A tenner says you can't..
Even if we restrict touch to probably its narrowest possible definition ie
"The sensory response to pressure on the skin"
then the Sun can touch you.
Photons from the Sun exert pressure on surfaces they hit.
If you travelled into the Sun in a spaceship and it could survive long enough without burning up then both the ship and yourself would be crushed by the pressure of the solar atmosphere as you travelled deeper towards the centre.
Ok, I give. Where did it come from and what are you claiming to own?
I look forward with fascination to hearing your detailed answer. Any resemblance between it and my forthcoming Nobel Prize will be entirely coincidental! :)
What A joke to think anyone can own a sun. How sad of what we become as human beings
Land ownership like money is a human construct. The borders of countries are what they are because that is what powerful groups of people decided. The borders of many ex-colonies were just drawn on a map by english civil sevants who had no knowledge of previous tribal claims eg India/Pakistan, Arab states, Many African countries.
At the moment ownership of land on the moon, other planets in the solar system and even the sun is pointless. In the case of the moon and other planets people can't get there to settle and in the case of the Sun there is no way of exploiting it. That will probably change and colonisation of the moon and mars for instance may well be possible in the centuries ahead. There might even be commercial possibilities to exploit the Sun at some point - though that is very speculative.
At that point ownership will be determined - hopefully without bloodshed. It is though very doubtful that any past claims such as embodied in Dennis Hope's moon ownership certificates or this Spaniard's Sun ownership would play any part in determining ownership.
In the longer term if travel to other solar systems becomes practical then people may own whole solar systems - there are enough of them in the Milkyway alone. Of course any natives might object but then that didn't stop the imperial powers in the past.
Under international law, the sky ends at the Kármán line a hundred km up, at which point outer space begins. The sun's photons may be trespassing on your property during the final .0000668449198% of their journey, but the sun itself occupies no part of it.
It seems to me that claiming ownership of the sun is absolutely pointless, and will remain so for all foreseeable futures.
Quite simply, laying claim to the sun is silly. Sillier by far than laying claim to, say, the moon, or Titan, or Venus or Mars, or Ceres.
The sun is, by far, the vastest thing in the solar system. Additionally, unlike the physical resource wealth of other locations, which would be more potentially worth laying claim to (my money's on Titan as being the most practical to lay claim and extract resources/set up colonies on,) the sun's use is in the energy it beams out into space.
Unfortunately for anyone who would like to claim the Sun, it meets the defining characteristics of a public good - it is non-excludable in that you cannot reasonably or even unreasonably restrict access to the energy being emitted from it, and it is non-rivalrous in that use by one party does not in any meaningful way impact the use of that energy by another party. You can't stop someone from putting up solar panels, or deploying a solar sail, or benefiting from the effects of solar energy reaching their home, such as photosynthetic plants growing, or what-not. Not without going and shooting them, which would be a tad difficult if you're set up on near-sol asteroid exulting over your ownership of the majestic fire god and they're half-way to the Oort Cloud.
It would be like trying to sell the Earth's atmosphere. Not canned bits of it, just the atmosphere of the Earth, in part or in whole. It's laughable, and any attempt to actually use force to enforce your claim would be seen as the efforts of a madman.
On the topic of laying claim to portions of other bodies in the solar system, the entire question is moot. No matter what some 50/100/150-year-old document may say, ownership will belong to the first party to get out there and lay claim to it, with the only way to contest said claims being the old-school way: to go there and fight them for it.
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