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Elon Musk will run into trouble setting up a Martian government, lawyers say:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is steadfast in realizing his dreams of establishing a permanent colony on Mars, but any new government there will face immense legal challenges.
We got an early glimpse of what such a future society could look like, buried deep inside the user agreement for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service.
“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the terms of service read. “Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”
[...] Lawyers, however, have their doubts about SpaceX’s abilities to set up a Martian state. In fact, several told The Independent in a new story, what SpaceX has laid out in its Starlink user agreement isn’t radically different from space treaties that have been signed over the years.
[...] For instance, the 2020 Artemis accords stipulate that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
[...] “[Musk] could be trying to lay some groundwork for offering up an independent constitution… just like he did for electric cars and reusable launch vehicles,” [Randy Segal, of the law firm Hogan Lovells] told The Independent. “Does it have any precedent or enforceability? The answer I’d say is clearly no; but if you say something enough, people might come around.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2020, @01:18PM
This is one of those laws that seems like a good idea as long as it's "won't someone think of the children!" Of course, the actual solution to this problem is to pressure sex-tourism destinations to change their own laws, so the same act is a crime everywhere.
The problem happens when, for example, repressive countries start charging people with various crimes against the state, then demanding extradition of asylum-seekers (or even citizens of other countries entirely). Which, under the terms of various international treaties, would likely be required to be upheld. For example, Saudi Arabia could charge one of their citizens with blasphemy for visiting a Christian church while in Europe or America, then sentence them to death when they returned home (or demand their extradition). Europe has prohibitions on extradition to countries for crimes which might be punished by death, but as far as I know the US doesn't (as the US still conducts its own executions), but either way they might decide to lower the charge just to life in prison. Irritating the Party is a capital crime in China.
Extraterritoriality just isn't a good idea, and unfortunately the current regime of international law is more focused on expanding it than curtailing it.
In any event, this doesn't have much to do with Mars, at least not yet. Earth-based national laws just aren't ever going to work or make sense in space, and this will be obvious to everyone as soon as any space colony is capable of surviving independently and building its own spaceships (as Earth-based governments could enforce their will by preventing companies from launching if they didn't toe the line in space). This will happen faster than most people expect, much more quickly than the three centuries from first contact it took for the American revolution, and possibly within the lifetime of people reading this.