In the 1950s, before space travel was a reality, scholars worried about whether orbiting the Earth would even be legal. Under the law as it existed at that time, each nation’s sovereignty extended usque ad coelum ? literally “to the heavens”. Each nation’s territory thus consisted of a wedge beginning at the Earth’s core and continuing infinitely upward and outward.

This posed a number of absurdities, but the greatest difficulty was to orbiting spacecraft. Flying over a nation’s territory without permission was illegal, perhaps even an act of war. But although aircraft could change course to avoid passing over countries who desired to bar their way, spacecraft ? their orbital paths fixed by the laws of physics ? could not. If any country beneath them (which might mean any country in the world, depending on the inclination of their orbit) objected, it didn’t matter that everyone else agreed.

Thus starts an interesting article by Glenn Reynolds in The Australian. The point? The experience gained then can be applied while developing international law for the Internet.