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Comment by k__ | Hacker News Reader

In Germany we don't got this right, but seldom I have been prohibited from "roaming" the landside. But we aren't allowed to put a tent anywhere and sleep in it, which is rather sad.

A friend of mine went on a hiking holiday in Scotland and he told me, he just walked till he was tired, put his tent up on the next green spot and slept there.

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As an aside, here in Scotland you quite often don't even need to put up a tent - there are houses/huts in a lot of wild locations, known as bothies, that are completely free to use:

http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/

we aren't allowed to put a tent anywhere and sleep in it, which is rather sad

Probably connected to the risk that squatter's rights poses to the land owner... not that pitching a tent for a night is a serious risk, but squatter's rights really encourages that kind of culture.

Not knowing anything about squatter's rights (or law in general), shouldn't it be possible to just create a law putting whatever limits we want on camping WITHOUT the need for it to be completely forbidden?

I am just now in a place where free camping is not allowed, but the local authorities interpret the law as: "no tents between dawn and dusk". I wish that was put into a written law.

The key item of squatter's rights is that if a squatter occupies land with the land-owner's knowledge for a number of years, the land now legally belongs to the squatter.

One night of camping is not years, but squatter's rights certainly encourages land-owners to be ever-strict about visitors to their land.

Yes, owning land is a big problem in all countries.

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