Property Rights in Space

Property Rights are essential to the functioning of a capitalist economy. Or any economy to be frank. Private enterprise will be what pushes development in space. The moon, with valuable resources such as helium-3, will be the first testbed for property rights beyond earth. The distinction here is that such property rights will be beyond and separated from national sovereignty. The only similar and pertinent cases are international maritime law, which is presented as relatively straightforward in the pop mechanics article, but are in fact incredibly complicated and ambiguous.

To effectively develop space (which will happen sooner than people think), nations need to get together and ratify a treaty to effectively delineate property rights.

An interesting wrinkle is the public/private divide: on earth, most actions that you undertake on your own property do not effect the property of others. In space, most notably because of space debris, your actions can and commonly will affect others. Thus, there needs to be the protection of property rights, but there also need to be an understanding of interrelated effects.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4264325.html

Detailed Boston Globe article on the same issue:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/18/my_space/?page=full