Seal Legality Act

Seal Legality Act:

Section 9.1, clause 5 will be amended as follows:

Section 9.1:

5. Each seal of The North Pacific's government institutions may not be used except to represent the government institution that established it.

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Let's face it, clause 5 has no effective legal weight anymore. While I have advocated for keeping it in the past, under the argument that the Coat of Arms has no legal weight to represent TNP without TNP being able to defend and limit its use, TNP's legal institutions never do actually defend it. For this reason, I propose we limit clause 5 to something that TNP would be willing to defend: its government seals, which would make a strong case for Fraud if used maliciously. This would leave the Coat of Arms to be used freely by the citizenry, which represents how it's currently used in reality, while still allowing the government to affix official seals to its publications.

Support! Thank you for proposing this to the Regional Assembly, Darcania.

Reasonable proposal. Supporting this.

Could this perhaps be phrased differently, to bar the use of any government symbol, seal, or coat of arms for any official or authoritative purpose? I think the issue with using the coat of arms was always the idea it gave off the impression someone was official, or the thing they’re doing was official. So make that illegal. Use the stuff in frivolous or creative ways without claiming authority you don’t have. Basically, turn the idea on its head - instead of saying the only okay way to use it, say the only ways it’s not okay to use it. And expand that to a broader class that includes seals, the coat, and any iconography we may end up using. No point in limiting it I would think.

Agreed with Pallaith. I think we could simply make it illegal to pretend to represent the government of TNP. Given the nature of the restriction as a limitation on everyone's personal freedoms, I also think it belongs better in the criminal code rather than in the cultural declarations chapter.

Should we change the name of the "seal" to something like "icon" to prevent confusion between the animals?

Pallaith:

Could this perhaps be phrased differently, to bar the use of any government symbol, seal, or coat of arms for any official or authoritative purpose? I think the issue with using the coat of arms was always the idea it gave off the impression someone was official, or the thing they’re doing was official. So make that illegal. Use the stuff in frivolous or creative ways without claiming authority you don’t have. Basically, turn the idea on its head - instead of saying the only okay way to use it, say the only ways it’s not okay to use it. And expand that to a broader class that includes seals, the coat, and any iconography we may end up using. No point in limiting it I would think.

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Yes.

Comfed:

Agreed with Pallaith. I think we could simply make it illegal to pretend to represent the government of TNP. Given the nature of the restriction as a limitation on everyone's personal freedoms, I also think it belongs better in the criminal code rather than in the cultural declarations chapter.

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Yes.

Kastonvia:

Should we change the name of the "seal" to something like "icon" to prevent confusion between the animals?

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No.

Comfed:

Agreed with Pallaith. I think we could simply make it illegal to pretend to represent the government of TNP. Given the nature of the restriction as a limitation on everyone's personal freedoms, I also think it belongs better in the criminal code rather than in the cultural declarations chapter.

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I agree with this approach.

I don't really like that approach because such is already enshrined in law under the Fraud clause. If we went with that approach though, then the motion could be changed as such:

Motion:

Clause 5 of section 9.1 of the Legal Code shall be removed from the Legal Code.

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I see Darc’s point. I suppose my only concern with this approach is that you have the prickly question of intent, and if the goal is not to let people use the official stuff unless they’re official, the redundancy would seem to discourage them. Of course, the obvious rebuttal there is what is driving this whole discussion: the belief that discouraging them is difficult if the law isn’t enforced.

For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that the fact the law isn’t prosecuted every time doesn’t automatically mean a law should be removed from the books. I think every situation is different and the law should be applied when a clear violation is occurring. The recent thing that brought this back up was in no way similar to someone outright committing fraud or trying to speak with an authority they didn’t have. I would have found prosecuting that to have been unnecessary. That being said…it could very well be the case we don’t care about this particular thing and maybe we don’t need to make a law against it. If we can just make sure to prosecute fraud when someone is effectively flashing a badge they don’t have, then that should be sufficient. Is there a way we can take another look at fraud and maybe tighten it up a bit so that we can effectively prosecute misuse of these things? Then we would have all the angles covered and wouldn’t have an issue repealing this bit if the legal code.

Pallaith:

Is there a way we can take another look at fraud and maybe tighten it up a bit so that we can effectively prosecute misuse of these things?

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Theoretically, yes, but it'd be a harder approach to take. One reason I wanted to keep seals as a protected class was so that Gross Misconduct could be used as well as Fraud, while allowing the Coat of Arms to still be a, well, cultural declaration, as per the chapter title. Gross Misconduct has generally been an easier prosecution than Fraud historically.
Admittedly, though, only Citizens actually swear an oath to follow the laws of TNP. It's a bit odd in the first place for there to be a law like this without any way to criminally prosecute non-Citizens for it. On the other hand, though, using a Seal inherently implies an intent to deceive others of your identity, as opposed to the Coat of Arms which is merely one of our symbols and only represents specifically the government de juro, not de facto. The government rarely reserves the CoA as its own symbol in practice.

Darcania:

Theoretically, yes, but it'd be a harder approach to take. One reason I wanted to keep seals as a protected class was so that Gross Misconduct could be used as well as Fraud, while allowing the Coat of Arms to still be a, well, cultural declaration, as per the chapter title. Gross Misconduct has generally been an easier prosecution than Fraud historically.
Admittedly, though, only Citizens actually swear an oath to follow the laws of TNP. It's a bit odd in the first place for there to be a law like this without any way to criminally prosecute non-Citizens for it. On the other hand, though, using a Seal inherently implies an intent to deceive others of your identity, as opposed to the Coat of Arms which is merely one of our symbols and only represents specifically the government de juro, not de facto. The government rarely reserves the CoA as its own symbol in practice.

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Bumping this now that the four votes before the RA have finished. I remain unconvinced that removing the clause entirely would be the right way to go about this, but don't wish to move forward on this yet with how many have voiced their opinion that direction.

The flag and coat of arms can still be a cultural declaration. It just doesn't need to say that it's illegal to fly it to prosecute people for Gross Misconduct.

Pallaith:

Is there a way we can take another look at fraud and maybe tighten it up a bit so that we can effectively prosecute misuse of these things?

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Personally I think this is pretty easy to do. We could add this clause to section 1.3 for example:

"Unauthorized Representation" is defined as attempting to officially represent the government, community or administration of The North Pacific in any capacity without authorization.

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Will it include fair use? We can have a Creative Commons license if its possible.

What do you mean, fair use? We're not establishing copyright here--that's handled by (iirc) the terms of service of this forum and NationStates.

I think it's more straight forward to say "only X, Y, Z officials' statements represent the views of TNP". It's more a matter of misrepresentation.

I think Comfed's suggestion makes the most sense here, from what I have read. Could we perhaps include a definition of authorization to cover the various methods through which officially representing the government is actually authorized? What principally counts as authorization as set out in that clause?