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Comment by RobertoG | Hacker News Reader

I doubt that, legally, a shipwreck of colonial times in Colombian waters is owned by Spain.

And I would like to think that most of the Spaniards agree with that.

Well, technically Colombia was then part of the Spanish Empire, and that galleon belongs to the Spanish Crown. I personally don't mind but knowing how low gold is in the spanish central bank, probably the spanish gov will make some kind of move to get back its "historical heritage"...

Empire which was revoked due to being an illegitimate and genocidal regime. Your argument suggests they should be allowed to re-steal now what they would have stolen back then.

No, I'm not saying that they should be allowed to re-steal. I said that I don't care about a shipwreck, but the spanish government has been known to claim this kind of finds in the past because technically that is a Spanish ship and legal precedents exist.

Also, all the global empires have been built on the same coercive foundation, and that doesn't make them "regimes".

Some American talking about genocide... That's really a joke!

The reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 represents a"vast genocide", the most sustained on record.

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7302

Well, it looks like there was, in fact, a vast genocide. In the north and also the south americas. Really sad...

Who said I am American?

I guess the details aren't the same, but Spain has asserted legal rights over shipwrecks in the past:

http://www.tulanemaritimejournal.org/finders-weepers-losers-...

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