Maria Duran has owned the sun for about five years now. She filed a claim with a Spanish notary office in 2010, after which she attempted to bill people who use solar power. Her claim was recognized by the Spanish courts because Spain is a country where logic and sense don't exist. While she has been unable to collect any fees or payments, she has still been generously allowing millions of people around the world to use her giant gas ball for energy an yway.
That generosity has run out for eBay, however. She is now suing the online retailer over their removal of her listings on the site selling small plots of the sun, citing it as an "intangible good." According to a June 9 AOL News report, she was getting about a dollar US per square meter of land on the sun.
The suit is expected to move forward sometime in July, with Duran asking for $11,000 in damages. She had already sold hundreds of plots since listing them on her account a couple of years ago. However, in a callous display of corporate heartlessness, eBay shut her down.
They claim that she can't sell plots of land on the sun, partially because there is no land on the sun, but also because there is no way for anybody to actually collect their purchase--yet. Their intangible goods policy precludes anyone from selling things that don't actually exist, nor things that someone doesn't have a claim to.
Duran does have a legal claim to the sun, however. Under Spanish law her claim of ownership has stood for several years with very little challenge, and she claims to have the right to do so for a variety of reasons. First, since companies are able to profit from other natural resources such as wind and water, why shouldn't she do the same for the sun? Additionally, thanks to loopholes in United Nations treaties, an individual has the right to claim ownership where a government or corporations could not.
eBay doesn't care about any of that, however. Rather than recognize her totally legal and reasonable claims, they have decided to arbitrarily protect their customers and the integrity of their site. It's not like she had ever made any other ridiculous claims of ownership and attempted to charge people for using them. We're pretty sure she totally had a legitimate claim when she copyrighted the 1932 book Call of Tarzan, or that time she tried to start her own religion. Those aren't the actions of a con artist nor a profiteer, just a reasonable woman who is trying to protect her interests.
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