(name here) wrote:
Actually if someone stole your house and forcibly kept you from coming back there you'd be on rather solid legal ground demanding it back. The laws for abandoned property are mostly for when you could have demanded it back but didn't.
More importantly, the Oafans here are the local authorities. They do not diplomatically recognize any other extant states as of yet, so from their legal perspective the Neofans are pirates. Them enforcing their position is no different from the UNS enforcing theirs. Sucks to be the one on the recieving side, but it's not really an existential threat and there's no real reason to think they won't be willing to sign and abide by treaties in the future simply because they're not obeying ones they aren't signatories to.
What's funny about your post is that this exact thing is happening on a fairly regular basis, and the squatters are pure hell to get rid of. There was recently an account of a family who allowed a guy to sleep in their camper (in the back yard) He broke into the house. They told him to leave, he swore out warrants and had the cops remove them from the house. They're now fighting for possession of their own home in the courts.
In the case of the Neofans v Anciant Oafans, the only thing giving the ancients any standing at all is their long guns. Their refusal to acknowledge any other authority doesn't grant them authority. By virtually any standard, checking out for billions of years is abandonment. Locking yourself away such that you cannot get back can also legitimately be considered abandonment. That makes the Neofans the current authorities, and the ancients more like ex-pats coming home and trying to undo everything that's been done since they left.
This wasn't a matter of forcibly keeping the ancients out, it was a case of them having left on their own with the intent (at least of the member of their own society in charge) of never coming back. That's textbook abandonment.
The fact that the modern inhabitants (or, at least their AI) let them out doesn't mitigate the original departure at all. If anything, there's a substantial claim for recompense for the act.
I stand by my claim that the ancient Oafans are going to be a galactic sized pain. After all, what's to prevent them from claiming everything in the whole galaxy?
They had long guns. Therefore, anybody who built long guns since then stole their idea. This claim has as much merit as reclaiming the habitats and ships.
They had teraporting. Therefore, anybody who's ever teraported owes them a license fee. The list goes on and on, and if anybody objects, there's those 15K+ long gun ships to press the point.