Individual Free Expression Guarantee

Uan-aa-Boa

This looks like it might well make quorum in 3 days time, so let's have a look.

Category: Furtherment of Democracy

Strength: Significant

Proposed by: The Wallenburgian World Assembly Offices

Acknowledging that freedom of expression functions as a cornerstone to the institution of democracy,

Recognizing the international interest in protecting such fundamental civil liberties,

The World Assembly hereby,

Defines "person" as a living, sapient individual, and "people" as the plural of "person",

Requires member states to recognize and defend the right of all individuals to express their political and ideological opinions and their personal and moral beliefs, to communicate information, and to refuse do so,

Further requires that all forums open to the public, and funded in part or in whole by member states, recognize and defend these rights,

Forbids member states from restricting individuals' free expression of their opinions, views, or beliefs based on the medium through which they are expressed,

Permits member states to regulate expression and communication for the purposes of:

Preserving the physical health and safety of the public,

Preventing undue harm to the civilian population or ongoing military operations,

Addressing intimidating, malicious, and hateful commentary,

Safeguarding legal processes and privacy agreements,

Addressing plagiarism or defamation,

Protecting physical or intellectual property,

Establishing age-based restrictions on the consumption of media, or

Complying with the requirements of previously passed and extant resolutions,

Declares that no mandate of this resolution may be interpreted to prohibit the regulation of advertisements.

Uan-aa-Boa

I think this is unacceptably bad and shows too much evidence of being rushed because there;s competition. It defines the term "person" at the start and then never uses it again, using individual instead, And having made it clear that it doesn't apply to companies and corporations it still feels the need to emphasise that it doesn't prevent the regulation of advertising. Hopefully we can do better than this,

Turbeaux

Uan-aa-Boa I noticed that too.

Caracasus

I noticed you had a draft up on GA Uan. Could you use some Forestian backing in your corner come the inevitable debates?

Uan-aa-Boa

Caracasus What I could really use is inspiration on how to make it work, because it doesn't right now. Suggestions welcome.

Caracasus

Uan-aa-Boa Are you still pursuing this? I'm wondering if potential GA writers couldn't post a thread here to get Forestian insight into the proposal.

Uan-aa-Boa

And the proposal has dropped out of the queue again because of Sciongrad campaigning against it. It will be interesting to see whether it makes it now.

There's concern being expressed on the GA forum that 5c has a lot of potential for government abuse.

Turbeaux

Uan-aa-Boa Yes, 5c would have been quite easy for repressive nations to abuse.

Uan-aa-Boa

It failed to make quorum.

Uan-aa-Boa

Caracasus I'm still looking at it and yes, I might get a thread going on.

Meanwhile this proposal may well be back with the nonsense clauses edited out.

Caracasus

Uan-aa-Boa I didn't want to post this in the drafting thread on the forums, but with these clauses here:

a. Member nations may impose reasonable restrictions on the commercial expression of legal persons in order to regulate false or misleading information, the promotion of products known to be seriously damaging to health and the exposure of individuals below the age of majority to the promotion of products and services that are restricted on the grounds of age

b. Member nations may impose reasonable restrictions on the political expression of legal persons that are not non-commercial organisations in order to prevent undue corporate influence on the political process.

What exactly is present to stop a corporation founding a shell not for profit outfit for the sole purposes of unrestricted corporate lobbying?

I am really very aware this isn't a field I know so much about, but why not roll out clause b. to all "legal persons"?

Areulder

Caracasus

What exactly is present to stop a corporation founding a shell not for profit outfit for the sole purposes of unrestricted corporate lobbying?

I would argue that laws preventing for profit corporations creating shell companies to bypass lobbying regulations would fall under "reasonable restrictions on the political expression of legal persons in order to prevent undue corporate influence on the political process." as even if the expression of a nonprofit cannot be regulated you can still regulate the relationship between the for profit and the lobbing entity.

As a real life example; The National Rifle Association has two branches important for our purposes. The NRA Foundation and the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. The NRA Foundation is a Charitable Organization and donations to it can be deducted as Charitable Contributions for tax purposes.The ILA is the NRAs lobbying wing. It is the organization that campaigns against new gun control laws, supports lawsuits against them in court and sends NRA members informations about the voting history of their districts candidates come election time.

Now the US doesn't prevent corporations from engaging in lobbying, But it does prevent charitable organizations from engaging in it. So why is The NRA Foundation a charitable organisation despite being run the most powerful political lobbyist in the nation? Because it itself does not engage in lobbying. It's purpose is to promote the shooting sports, teach safe shooting and ethical hunting, and organize competition. More importantly, because none of the money it collects is used by other parts of the NRA, The law stops the NRA from taking the tax deductible donations from the NRA Foundation and using them to fund lobbying through the ILA.

Uan-aa-Boa

Shells are an issue, as Imperium Anglorum pointed out in the thread. I'd been trying to refine the definition of a non-commercial organisation, but your suggestion isn't actually simpler and more effective. Thanks!

Uan-aa-Boa

Areulder I think that's fair.

Charitable lobbying is an interesting one. You could say that people don't give money to charity in order for it to be spent on politics and this might be the thinking behind the US rule. On the other hand, it seems to me that homelessness charities should be able to seek to influence housing policy, mental health charities mental health policy and so forth. We should be able to try to fix the causes of some of the problems as well as just putting sticking plasters on the symptoms. As the old quote goes: "When I give food to the poor they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist." In Scotland the government holds consultations of "stakeholders" which it proactively seeks out - including companies, charities and other non-profit groups. In 2014 the regulator published guidelines on the extent to which charities should speak about the independence referendum, but these were generally thought to be less than illuminating. There's also the strange phenomenon of sock puppetry, whereby publicly funded organisations exist primarily to lobby the government.

As another example of circumventing the rules, I'm a director of a company that is a subsidiary of a housing association (provider of affordable rented housing, not sure what the US equivalent is). The association applied for charitable status because of the benefits that confers, but it does some things the rules say aren't charitable. These are now done by the subsidiary, a non-charitable company with 1 share, which belongs to the association. Mainly the company rents out houses that are a bit too upmarket to be officially classed as affordable (though still much more affordable and secure than a private tenancy). The association gave us the houses as a gift and manages them for us in exchange for a fee that is, by a staggering coincidence, the same as the rent the tenant pays. In one sense I think this stinks because it's blatantly loopholing the rules, in another sense I'm not concerned because we're hardly Nestle or Enron. We might expand into composting and small scale renewable energy. We're still the good guys.

A slightly more troubling example from the US would be the fact that the national advisory bodies on diabetes, heart disease and so forth are reliant on donations from food producers and their umbrella groups, leading to their dietary advice being distinctly non-radical.

The point is that whatever the rules are, organisations will find workarounds. I agree that the best solution is to specify very little and fall back on the intention of preventing undue corporate influence. I'm aware that in the GA we're mainly writing for US players with US expectations. To me it seems self-evident that corporate influence on politics is prima facie bad, but to what extent do you think other people will need to be persuaded of that? Am I likely to run into the view that lobbying will be most effective when governed by the free market or anything like that? Non parlo Americano.

Areulder

Re, Zone 71's legality question: I think any legal challenge could be nipped in the bud by changing the mandate to read "Resolves that the free expression of legal persons in member nations shall be protected to the same extent, and may be subject to the same restrictions, as the free expression of individuals under the provision of national law and of unrepealed World Assembly resolutions, save that"
This has the benefit of preventing nations creating a double standard in areas where UM's resolution is silent, or in the event it is repealed and means that the resolution still has an effect even in the unlikely event that all resolutions protecting expression are repealed, satisfying even the broadest interpretations of the house of cards rule.

Uan-aa-Boa

Areulder I'm not sure that's necessary. Christian Democrats and Sierra Lyricalia are active in the drafting thread and not seeing a problem. The precedent is my short-lived but legal Promoting Sustainable Timber which referenced whatever resolutions were in force at the time in exactly the same way. I don't really want to risk our resolution sanctioning any crazy shit that might be lurking in some nation's own laws.

No offence to Zone 71, but I don't think they're the sharpest tool in the box. They couldn't tell what the resolution said until someone spoon fed it to them.

I think we're basically there now, unless there was feedback from XKI that I can't see, What approach would you like to take regarding the campaign telegram?

Areulder

Well I think we should do a delegate campaign to get it to vote. I can modify that to run the campaign in XKI