One of the things it takes is piracy being severely restricted, but by the usual interpretations of the space traty, thatsfine in space.

Are you saying piracy is fine in space? It's not the way I read the treaty - sounds like it'd be not ok - therefore potentially opening up options for "defense" based armament.

The treaty explicitly says that piracy is not okay. In fact, because of the way outer space is in many cases treated as international waters, the same laws governing piracy on the seas govern space activities as well, just with some differences regarding how ships are assigned to nations ("what flag they fly").

However the real outstanding issue with the OST is how to handle mining claims. Claim jumping is a real issue, since you could spend a ton of money prospecting a resource, only to have your competition to rush over and build a hut on top of it and legally claim it as their own.

There needs to be some sort of mechanism, perhaps even not governmental if renegotiating the OST is too dangerous or unlikely to happen soon, by which a company can claim a mining claim over a resource they have prospected and have that claim be legally protected from claim jumpers for a period of time.