Hello Honorable Legislators,
My proposal aims to make part of the constitution less subjective and more objective, as well as expanding the scope of rights and freedoms in the region.
Here are the proposed additions and replacements:
Charter of the Coalition of the South Pacific
[…]
III. RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS
Recognizing the democratic rights and freedoms of all members of the Coalition.
(1) All members of the South Pacific will enjoy the freedoms of expression, speech, assembly, and the press, limited only by reasonable moderation policiesas long as they do not use them to harm, threaten, or violate the rights and freedoms of others, or to promote hate speech against people or communities, being subject, in such cases, to the penalties set by law.
[…]
(6) All members have the right to privacy of their personal information and communications. No one shall conduct surveillance or interfere with the private communications of the members, except in exceptional circumstances defined by law and in accordance with appropriate legal procedures, being prohibited the disclosure of personal information.
It’s not a big deal, but I hope you like it. I’m also open to adding more stuff or fixing what’s already there.
These are important issues, but I feel that litigating over their specifics should lie outside the realm of in-character government. I trust our administration and moderation team to handle issues such as harm to other users, hate speech, and personal privacy — frankly, if I didn’t, I’d choose different communities to be part of. For what it’s worth, we also have all of Article XI of the Charter on the books, which is pretty much dedicated to establishing reasonable moderation policies.
So if someone uses their free speech to “harm, threaten, or violate the rights and freedoms of others”, they will no longer enjoy the right to free speech?
Believe me, I do too. But, even so, malicious people will always exist and if, some day, they enter the moderation, they can abuse these “loopholes” in the law and take advantage of them to act in bad faith.
Sure, but the other section in your bill is also covered by Moderation policy - i.e. the Community Standards prohibit sharing personally identifying info, and info that is attached to the forum is governed by the forum’s Privacy Policy.
I meant that I can remove Section 6, and keep the amendments from Section 1, since it was already in Charter, I think it’s appropriate to make it more objective.
Anyway, and explaining my point about Section 6 (sorry for the excessive amount of text), I think it’s important to make clear and evident in our main document the main things taken into account in our forum rules, RMB, Discord and etc. It is not up to us to moderate, but it is up to us to define what is fair or not.
Well, in my view, Charter is much more prominent and is the first thing, I imagine, that a person looks for when entering a region. Of course, the rules must be emphasized and highlighted, but Charter has to bring this all together, preventing the person from feeling “tired” of having to go from one place to another to read the rules.
That is not what your draft says. It says that people lose their freedom of expression, speech, assembly, and of the press, the moment they “harm, threaten, or violate the rights and freedoms of others”. That is a vastly more expansive and unchecked power than simply “limited by reasonable moderation policies”.
I posted my latest comment taking into account your edit. The fact remains that your proposal allows for penalties that (i) would be set by Assembly law, and therefore subject to political considerations; and (2) have no legal requirement to be proportional or otherwise reasonable. This is in every way a downgrade from the status quo where moderators are the ones who determine the appropriate response to unacceptable behaviour.
On your point 2 I have to agree and acknowledge my mistake.
However, in point 1, as you said, it makes no sense to take political issues into account, as opinions against the government or against members of the Assembly (as long as it does not qualify as hate speech) can in no way be punished, since what I wrote describes the applicable penalty situations.
If I understood something wrong in your speech, and I admit that possibility, I would appreciate it if you correct me.
Your are introducing OOC considerations to an IC document. The Charter is the constitutional document of the Coalition that regulates our government simulation, not a “main document” that stands above the Community Standards or the Privacy Policy or that should somehow “bring everything together”.
I believe that, with this explicit in Charter and, even if it is not it “obligation” to gather all this, I don’t see why not. It guarantees that other laws do not violate these principles and, even if this is already stated in other documents, it is the basic thing to have in a democratic Constitution and that clarifies as many things as possible or appropriate, the more accessible and understandable things are, the better. The Charter puts together an overview of how things work and is supplemented by the other laws, or at least I believe it should be.