The UN Principles on Remote Sensing and the GATS: Conflicts or peaceful co-existence?
- Paper number
IAC-07-E6.4.08
- Author
Mr. Clemens A. Feinaeugle, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Germany
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Commercial remote sensing with satellite navigation and imagery has evolved to be a freely traded service, individually owned and universally sold via Internet as e.g. Google Earth. Since providing such navigation and imagery via Internet can be seen as a service in the sense of Art. I:3 (b) of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) the trade with such internet services is governed by the general obligations and the specific commitments of the GATS agreement. In this context the question arises of how to reconcile the WTO ideas of the liberalization of international trade with the UN principles relating to remote sensing of 1986. Concretely, the problem of the principle of non-discriminatory access of the sensed state to the primary and processed data on reasonable cost terms (under Principle XII of the UN principles) and the GATS obligation to grant market access with possible exceptions jumps out at the legal observer. The paper scrutinizes possible conflicts of the legal regimes on outer space and the WTO and takes a look at state practice of national legislation in respect of commercial remote sensing. It suggests that as the law stands at the moment the corpus iuris spatialis shall not impede the free international services trade.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-E6.4.08.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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