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In article <dtpb26$1tk$02$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Alan Johnson wrote:
> Evenin' all. What's general opinion on this kind of thing? Naughty,
> don't care, good for business and punters?
>
How did the song about Mussolini go? 'Hanging from a lamppost at
the corner of the street?'
(http://www.the-artery.co.uk/words/poems/0121.php)
Too good for them.
I gather that the rules in America are a little on the Draconian
side, but I do understand the difficulty of framing these sorts of
laws. There's an argument that for rapidly eroding sites, it's better
to have people collecting the fossils before they get destroyed by
nature. But the problem with commercial trading is that it tends to
strip the fossils from their context and destroy useful information.
I'm not sure exactly what the state of the law is in Britain.
For coastal sites I'd guess that between high and low tide lines, any
fossils are the property of the Crown Estates, while inland they're the
property of the land's owners. Out at sea ... well I've never heard of
any serious attempts at SCUBA fossil hunting. But with a legal
background like that, then it's a simple question of theft (civil case,
perhaps criminal for big ones) or of theft from the Crown (firing squad
without a hankie, or if you're unlucky the VAT man).
I suppose it would be possible to frame a set of laws that would
allow trade while requiring preservation of the relevant scientific
data, but it would be a hell of a job to cover all bases in a fair,
equitable and workable manner.
--
Aidan Karley FGS
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233
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