Yes, Virginia, There Is Copyright In Space

And it's even weirder than you think. In a nice blog piece last week The Economist looked at the legal tangles around ISS Station Commander Chris Hadfield's recording and subsequent broadcast via YouTube of an updated rendition of "Space Oddity." Fortunately for now, all these tangles remain theoretical because Hadfield and his collaborators took care beforehand to secure all the necessary rights. Still, it points out that even today copyrights and licenses are defined by national boundaries and treaties, both of which the ISS and the Internet pretty blithely ignore.