In law, telepossession is the right of ownership of a resource based on
telepresence
Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance or effect of being present via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location.
Telepresence requires that the user ...
rather than physical proximity. The term gained importance in
maritime salvage following the case of the
SS Central America
SS ''Central America'', known as the Ship of Gold, was a sidewheel steamer that operated between Central America and the East Coast of the United States during the 1850s. She was originally named the SS ''George Law'', after George Law of ...
. In the case of the SS ''Central America'', the Columbus-American Discovery Group Inc. won over the insurer,
Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company. This case was decided in the
4th Circuit Court of Appeals
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (in case citations, 4th Cir.) is a federal court located in Richmond, Virginia, with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:
* District of Maryla ...
in 1992.
The basis for a claim of telepossession was the operation of ''robotic workers'' at the submerged site, where they performed the tasks of a manned crew of salvage workers. These telepossession robots worked to secure the site, provide for the management of the site, retrieve the gold from the shipwreck and other tasks. The
common law principle of ''
pedis possessio'' was relied on by the claimants to press their claim for ownership of the recovered gold. Pedis possesseo in layman's terms means "To walk on and to claim possession". This principle is the basis of the 1862 Homestead Act and the
General Mining Act of 1872 of the
Congress of the United States, which opened up the western United States for colonization and growth.
Under the 1967
Moon Treaty of the United Nations, all property must be developed to the benefit of all humanity. Telepossession can provide for a form of possession which will allow mining and space colonization companies from all the world's nations, as private entities, to develop the extraterrestrial resources used in making space stations, fleets of spacecraft, fueling stations, asteroid threat control, infrastructure and all other colonization infrastructures. See United Nations Treaties regarding space and Space Policy.
See also
*
General Mining Act of 1872
*
Outer space treaty
References
{{Reflist
* Telepossession: in the cas
Columbus-American Discovery Group Inc. v. Atlantic Mutual Ins. Co., 974 F.2d 450 (4th Cir 1992) see also (Lueck, 1995, p. 413)
Original Assignment of Private PropertyProperty Rights: Cooperation, Conflict and Law
Property law