Summer night at the beach. A couple is making out over the warm sand, watching as the moon rises. To demonstrate his Love, in a romantic reaction he says:
-"I gift you the moon."
Out of nowhere an attorney makes his appearance. He was listening the whole thing (what a perv).
-"I am sorry fellows, but that is not possible: There's an ONU treaty that regulates space activities and forbids the appropriation of the space, moon, or any other celestial object... Just that... Cyas!"
A space lawyer? Are you kidding me? Don't we already have way too many, more than enough, lawyers here on Earth to actually need space ones now?
Maybe, but certain situations point out that they may be needed: And at an increased pace!
Space legislation, this far we've came.
A branch that is in charge of a diversity of topics that include, space militarization, orbital and frequencies regulations among others.
This may sound silly until we realize that if the Enterprise crashed against our ISP's main satellite... Somone would need to file a lawsuit. You need: A space lawyer!
Back to the beach. Certainly, if someone wanted to gift the moon to another person, that would be impossible, there's a treaty that forbids it the: ya que existe un tratado aprobado por la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas llamado "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies".
In this international document the regulation of international space activities was regulated under a juridic framework, we could call it the: Space Constitution.
Legally speaking, whenever we refer to the Moon, we refer to any extraterrestrial territory or any celestial body.
The main objective is to prevent the space from converting into a controversial territory for which countries would have more excuses to shoot the fuck out of each other.
Consider that this treaty was born under the context of the Cold War.
So, nobody can gift the moon?
The treaty only cover NATIONS, and by default this extends to private entities and individuals. This is by applying the maiore ad minus, that roughly means "the one that can do more, can do the less". This is the aplication of the Agumentum Fortiori in which one of the variants, a maiori ad minus, (if the law authorizes the larger, implicitly authorizes the smaller).
In our case, since the States cannot appropriate the Space, Moon or celestial bodies; neither can the individuals or private companies.
So, whom is the owner of the Moon?
It is a res communis (yes, I ADORE dead languages). This establishes that air, water rain (for example) are owned by everyone, accessible to each single person for their use. The moon belongs to everyone, yet: to nobody.
Asteroid Mining
Ah, this has to be a good one!
During November 2015 Barack Obama, the US President at that moment, signed the bill recognizing asteroid resource property (the "Space Act"). This is a law that authorizes, for the first time, the commercial use of the resources gathered at asteroids and the Moon. A legal stepping stone for humankind
Yes, it is a disruptive law that states that a US citizen has the right to the benefits of the resources gathered from space: including: possession, appropriation, transportation, usage and sales rights, in conformity to the applicable laws including the International obligations of the USA.
But don't you dare to think that the US is the only one that has this. November 2016, Luxembourg passed a law that established a jurisdictional regulatory frame that allow private companies based on that country to exploit the resources they may gather from space.
Yes, those laws collide against what the Space Treaty dictates.
It looks like sci-fi, but it is not. The potential this whole thing has is such that people like Larry Page and Eric Schmidt (Google's founders) invested in the company that plans to extract natural resources from asteroids: Planetary Resources Inc. (what a display of originality for the name!); test satellites are already in space.
Space mining is totally against the current space treaties; but... that is a problem Space Lawyers and attorneys should solve in a near future.