That kind of attitude makes me very happy that my native Norway (and the rest of Scandinavia, to various extents) have the legal concept of "freedom to roam". It has also (in a much more limited version) been embedded into law in the UK where I live now, in recent years.

In Norway the concept pre-dates written law, and in its current incarnation it guarantees public right of access to most non-urban land, as well as almost all of the coast line. Basically, outside of urban areas, as long as we avoid peoples gardens, and things like tended fields, we can pretty much go where we want, whether or not it is private property, without seeking permission from the property owner (though it is considered polite to introduce yourself to the owner and seek to take their wishes into consideration if you make use of the rights in the vicinity of where they live).

We can also, with some further limitations, pretty much camp where we want. Further, tradition creates legal rights of access - if a path or a road has a history of public use (20-30 years is a typical yardstick, though frequency of use and the owners actions in the period that usage is becoming established will mattr), that access is legally protected; if a new owner decides to try to prevent continued public access, they will generally face an uphill battle.

The reasoning behind this is basically that allowing a property owner exclusive use of large areas of land would be a massive curtailment of the liberties of the population as a whole, and that maximizing public access to land is a substantially larger net positive in terms of liberty than the relatively limited negative impact for property owners.

It is considered so fundamental in Norway that it was not considered necessary to codify in law until 1957 (almost all of Norwegian law is codified), as it was seen as intrinsic to the legal system. In Sweden, their variation is protected by inclusion in their constitution.

> limited negative impact for property owners

I guess then you don't have a huge problem with vandalism and litter. It is hard to find a public space here where some dickwad hasn't left a beer can, used condom or cigarette butt. We also like to sue the crap out of each other. So anytime someone is on your land, you are subject to getting sued when they get hurt. So I don't blame people for trying to keep other people off their land. It would be nice if we had what you describe. But I think that ship has sailed here.

The right is contingent on a duty to leave the land in a comparable state to what you found it. If you were to vandalise or litter, you could not be charged with trespass but you could most certainly be prosecuted for vandalism and littering and a land owner taking action would certainly be the one to get the sympathy.

I think the freedom to roam in general has a substantial impact on reducing this problem - we're taught about these rights in primary school, but also taught about the corresponding duty to leave campsites etc. as we found them, and to be considerate about how we exercise these rights.

Of course, there's always some assholes.

As someone who vacations frequently in Norway and Switzerland I quite love that. I always found it super ironic that to have the freedom to roam I have to leave the USA :)

I feel like the general population in Norway and Switzerland are more educated and tend to respect each other more. In the US, you always have riff-raff that ruin it for the rest of us.

My impression is that while existing property generally is grandfathered when regulations change, renovations then require you to bring the relevant part up to code. Thus, if you want to change stuff, like putting up a fence, then it does not seem far-fetched that you would then be required to comply with current public access rules.

If you have an old deal, that's fine. But you can't justifiably claim you both have a right to be grandfathered in while at the same time updating the property to current standards.

Great point

There is nothing unpopular about your opinion. Everyone agrees that property rights are important. But in number of cases property rights also conflicts in a way it is hard to resolve. For example you may have a smoke emitting chimney in your house which spoils the air for your neighbor. In this case your neighbor too has a good case against you because your activities in your property infringe on your neighbor's property rights.

In this particular case I think Vinod has the right to block the access to beach from his property. But at the same time Government has a responsibility to see how an access to the beach may be provided.

> Everyone agrees that property rights are important.

I think you will find not everyone agrees with that. Since well before Proudhon's "property is theft" (from "What is property?", 1840), there have been ideological arguments against property rights on the basis that the limit the liberty of the population as a whole. And while wholesale rejection of property rights is not common, it most certainly exist, and has a history pre-dating our written legal systems.

Careful about generalisations.

Well, those examples would probably agree that property rights were important in the sense of being an important subject, too... But maybe that was not what the previous meant.

By that logic we cant generalize about anything because there is some hippie out there arguing against it.

The problem with this reasoning is that it's based on the incorrect assumption that one can "own" land completely and outright.

This isn't true since land ownership itself is something that can only exist with the consent of the community. Unlike the fruits of one's labor, the modern concept of land ownership is just a modernization of the older mechanism of land ownership, which was enforced by the pointy end of a sharp stick. In that old model of land ownership, you'd have a lot of trouble holding onto your land if your activities on your land started poisoning the local water supply and ruining the surrounding land for everyone.

In the new model of government enforced land-ownership, you still have to treat your land in a way that's compatible with the needs of the landowners that surround you.

We have codes and ordinances so people don't just go willy-nilly doing any old thing. I'm not against some regulation. So in most cases I would agree with you. But this isn't one of them. His locking his gate didn't poison anyone's well or burn down anyone's house. All he did was stop random anybodies from entering his land. He didn't even mess up the beach or anything. No surrounding land was touched. He locked his gate. The fact that the people were entering his land to get to a public beach is irrelevant to me. I firmly believe any land owner should have 100% full right to block any person from entering their land (aside from proper police authority). Just like many times before and many times to come... people are butt hurt that something they used but didn't own was suddenly taken away from them.

If someone buys every house around yours, do you lose the right to traverse their land to get to and from your own?

I think you have a reasonable point about the beach still being public. In this case, the point of the permit battle is to make this land worth less to him since he won't be able to redevelop it. The California Coast Commission has a point of view which is to try and ensure public access to public beaches and will use their power to try and force him to negotiate.

In regards to what the tech community can do about this, how about organizing a large beach party and get some boats to ferry people in?

"how about organizing a large beach party and get some boats to ferry people in?"

What would be the point? Vinod is not living there so he would be indifferent to it, at least until 2021.

Per Raz, Berlin, &c., these problems of conflicting goods arise precisely because values do not form a simple taxonomy with one supreme overriding ancestor. It's hard, and messy, because we have to balance several legitimate claims.

Many technical people -- certainly including myself -- can tend towards thinking that all problems have a single solution, that those solutions are tractable, and that disagreement is a function of lack of information. That is not always the case.

I'm inclined to agree. To me the irresponsible party is the previous owner. They obviously had some sort of agreement but never codified it in law. If they had turned over an easement or otherwise established rights for the road, then this problem wouldn't exist. But they either didn't bother out of ignorance, or they didn't want to, to maximise their sale price.

There is a precedent here, and while I absolutely agree that all shoreline should be publicly accessible, if that shoreline is landlocked by private property, that's going to be too bad.

This reminds me of the 'landlord evicts squatter' type stories that spring up from time to time. The issue arises from the time someone gets established in a not-very-firm legal sense - and that is allowed to fester over time. Eventually when someone moves to implement the law as written, it results in ugly battles.

There is also lots of articles about the 'right to roam' in the UK which has similar issues. Often these have been abused by paparazzi to invade the privacy of people who, ironically, purchase remote properties to get some privacy.

Personally, if I had the $37m, I wouldn't have the stomach for this kind of fight and would have moved on. But there is probably a big win coming for establishing ownership over the entire land over the next ten years or so.

I've always found the placement of properties right on the shoreline in California and Florida somewhat surprising. Where I live, virtually nobody lives right on the shoreline like that, simply because there is little, if any, private property that close to a beach.

>I understand that people have been using that road for years and it was never a problem with the previous owner. But there is a new owner. He does have a problem with people using the road on his land. That sucks for those people but it is not their land and it never was. The beach is still public... just hard to get to. Once you get there, he can't do anything about it (up to the high water mark).

Not sure how it works in the US, but English Law has something to say about this. If your property is blocked by the property of another you get to have a right of passage through his land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement

There are similar laws in the US, but in this case the owner is arguing that the treaty in which the US acquired California from Mexico in the 1800's (requiring the US let the people who already owned land in California keep it) supersedes the California law requiring public access.

This was my first impression as well. It seems to me that if you're allowed to spend the $37m to officially "own" the property then it would logically follow that you should be allowed to alter it or decide you don't feel like having random people on it. If not, then the road should be state owned with all surrounding property private.

I recognize that there's complex case-law here that differentiates between those varying shades of grey, but that's just my (unpopular) opinion.

If your property was no connected to all the rest of the property on earth, the resources under the earth, and the air above it, I might agree.

Are you saying that since all land is connected that no one should be able to have any say about their own land? I hope not because that seems a bit ridiculous.

Pretty sure that's not what he's saying; nice strawman, though.

Then what did he mean? Obviously all land is connected to all the rest of the property on earth, the resources under the earth, and the air above it. I don't have an option for it not to be. But he said if it wasn't connected then he might agree with me. So clearly he will never agree with me because it will always be connected. I can only assume he doesn't feel it is ok for me to dislike when others try to tell me what I can do with my property. From that I can assume then he feels this way about everyone and not just me. No attempt at a strwman. just trying to infer his meaning.

Honestly, I agree. However, there are often laws that protect right of ways that are already in use and things like that. Heck, people often sell property separate from mineral or water rights that have been sold separately. I don't have any problem with it if the owner bought it knowing he would have to retain public access, since then it would have been priced into the cost.