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Page 3 of 3 Similarly, few people have considered the importance of the space ABOVE their land. We can and often do establish boundaries in space. When you acquire land, in order to further protect it from trespass, it would be helpful for you to establish a recognized claim of all rights of occupancy of the space above your land to a definite height. Again, it is not sufficient for you to say that you own the land "from here UP", or "to the moon". Make your boundary specific, limited, and reasonable. Establish your ownership from the surface of your land upward to 500 feet, or 1,000 feet, or some other precise distance. This is a problem that has arisen in connection with many pieces of land owned near airports. Airplanes often come uncomfortably close to houses which happen to be just below an established flight route. If you have established your ownership to a certain amount of space above your property, then rightfully no one else may occupay or travel through that space without obtaining permission from you, permission which could rightfully require compensation to you. The fact that you can't see a spatial boundary doesn't mean that it can't exist. Often we can't see the boundaries of a parcel of land separating it from other parcels. However the line can be accurately and precisely plotted with maps and surveying tools, and that is sufficient. You can also rightfully own the air that you can successfully bound. You can compress it into a cylinder, or blow it into a balloon. The cylinder or baloon provides the boundary, and the air within the boundary is property although the air outside the cylinder or balloon is not. This would be true of an odor, a beam of light, or a melody. Contain it, provide a boundary, and you have a property. Unless you have a distinguishable and definable boundary, you do not (and can not) have a property. Go to next lesson ...>>
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