[Clips] China unreal estate firm howls at moon ban

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Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:22:50 -0500
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China unreal estate firm howls at moon ban
Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:28 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - For sale: acre plots, great Earth views, low gravity,
moonrock-bottom prices, about as away from it all as you can get.

A Chinese company is fighting for the right to pitch plots of land on the
moon for sale after authorities shut the scheme down on charges of
profiteering and lunacy.

Beijing Lunar Village Aeronautics Science and Technology Co. has sued
commercial authorities in China's capital for suspending its business
license on October 28, just days after it opened, Xinhua news agency said
Tuesday.

"There is not a law or regulation in China that prohibits the selling of
land on the moon," chief executive officer Li Jie was quoted as saying.

"They don't have enough evidence to make the ruling."

The company, which calls itself the "Lunar Embassy to China," had sold 49
acres of lunar land to 34 Chinese clients within three days of opening on
October 19, Xinhua previously reported, two days after two Chinese
astronauts returned to Earth from the country's second manned space mission.

Just under 300 yuan was all it cost to buy a deed promising rights to one
acre of dusty lunar soil and any minerals up to three km (two miles)
underground until the company was accused of illegal speculation and
profiteering.

The domestically financed firm is the China agent of the U.S.-based Lunar
Embassy, an extra-terrestrial real estate agency aimed at exploiting what
it sees as a loophole in a 1967 international treaty on the moon.

Earlier this month, the Lunar Embassy started selling domain names for the
"extra-terrestrial Internet," which the company says will eventually
include Web sites with such endings as .lunar, .space and .uranus.

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R. A. Hettinga rah@...
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'