Extraterrestrial Laws And Differences Between Local Laws

I have read the Hollywood Law article and think that in an interstellar community, there is bound to be things that appear to be Hollywood law in Earth that is actually true elsewhere. This thread is intended to be a collection and discussion of how laws work differently in everyone's fictional universe so feel free to share.

In my case, shooting at a corpse is attempted murder, but if the corpse is more than one week, the charges become "improper dead body handling". Then again, corpses visibly rot at that time and it would be very obvious that the body was dead to begin with. Would that work elsewhere?

edited 14th Aug '14 9:12:26 AM by murazrai

I presume that you cant damage a corpse because of revivication technology? If people innocent until proven guilty in your setting, demonstrating that the accused had knowledge of the age of the corpse could be challenging to prove.

A.I.s are considered "minors" until they are ten years old. Until then their creator is considered their legal guardian and is responsible for their upbringing, essentially being their parent. This is to benefit both the creator, who can put the AI to work within legal limits, and the AI which has legal protection while still developing.

Such technology does not exist. There's a case of a dead body fell off from a lorry carrying dead bodies on a road. Worms are already visible on it but the face was still recognizable. A person who identified its identity who happened to have a grudge in the past publicly slashed the body into pieces and stomped on it repeatedly. Said person was arrested with murder charges, but sent to court trial with improper dead body handling charges because forensic examination determined that the body was dead 10 days ago before the cuts done by the person.

That's a good idea as it recognize anything sapient having human rights. But, it could raise controversy to the "personhood" thing in the sense that there will be two opposite objections: One which argues that 10 years old human is still minor and should be extended to human standards while another that argues that AI is merely programming and the creator should be responsible regardless of how old the AI is.

The thing to keep in mind is the laws have some sort of logic behind them. It's not always sound logic, but there's a train of thought that can be followed later to why the law was made.

Your law about it being murder to damage a corpse that's under ten days dead — why? what was the reason that was made a law, if there's no revivification (technical, magical or otherwise)?

Initially, when the law was made, there is no attempted murder and any attempted murder is treated as if the victim was already killed. The specific text was "any attempt of causing death shall be deemed as murder regardless of whether the victim survives or it was alive to begin with". The law was written that way to deter people from attempting murder.

However, another case has a man stumbling upon a dead baby which was undiscovered for one week and it was visibly rotting. Said man tossed the corpse into a dustbin which has bricks and the head hit them, mistaking it as a doll. When the police discovered it and forensic reports showed that it was killed by head injury, said man was arrested on the basis of CCTV footage of that particular area and almost get sentenced, only saved by a witness who saw the whole thing and another person who stumbled upon it a few days ago but did not do anything on it. Ever since, handling of dead bodies were legislated so that people who found any dead bodies (animals and plants included) has to be reported to the authorities and left undisturbed. It does help that once case of food poisoning related deaths happening during the trial was caused by the usage of dead body tissues.

edited 15th Aug '14 5:37:34 PM by murazrai

...i dont think a rotting baby could be mistaken for a doll.

That doesn't make sense. First off, a visibly-rotting corpse or one that's already maggot-riddenis not going to be mistaken for a doll or a mannequin.

Second, your thinking leading to the law still doesn't connect. If the law was originally made to cover "attempted murder" by treating any attempt at killing someone as though it had succeeded, what's the thinking behind extending that to someone who's already dead? Under that sort of law, even burying a corpse is murder, because "if they were still alive, they would suffocate."

You've got a clever idea that simply makes no sense at all, extraterrestrial origin or not.

There are dolls which looks like that, almost always used as scare pranks or as something to vent stress on. There are also higher ended dolls like that for use in medical and forensic schools to teach how to handle bodies like that.

For your first point, see above. Regarding the second point, burials are done by registered burial officers and only they are allowed to bury dead bodies after medical examination. As for the extending it to the dead bodies, corpse desecration was rampant before the law was written (death rates were high back then too) and legislators think that by heavily punishing corpse desecration it will reduce such incidents. The law worked and few people complained.

a rotting baby would smell, for one thing.

especially after a week.

and a prank doll is still going to look and feel different from the actual thing. unless this guy had no sense of smell and thick gloves, it aint happening.

to say nothing of the fact that a week old rotting baby corpse would leave a mess on the area it has been for a week. it seriously stretches the suspension of disbelief that someone can come across a rotting baby corpse, pick it up and still somehow think it was a doll.

Hmm...so that's how dead bodies actually work. I did stumble a dead cat which doesn't rot until a week has passed, which is partly the basis for this idea. Though in that case said man is an old man who has poor eyesight and lost his sense of smell.

Anyway, move on to the next one. Research names are protected from trademark laws in the sense that researches are considered a separate category. This means if a research project is named after a registered trademark they cannot be sued for it as it is considered intellectual property trolling and violation of academic freedom. If the research is jointly done with educational institutions in Earth, will the research project get the same protection?

Again, a cool concept. Why? What was the reasoning behind it?

Some researches are inspired by existing products, media and the like. Then, a research uses such those names to honor those things, but before such clauses existed, researchers could get bankrupted by lawsuits with regards of usage of the names by businesses, even when those researchers were funded by said businesses themselves.

That's not how it works, though. If a business owns a trademarked name, they can use it however they want. For a business funding a research project to be sued for using a name that the business already had trademarked, they'd have to sue themselves and win.

And it also ignores the purpose behind trademarking a name in the first place, which is to establish a unique identity connection between the name and the specific product made by that company. One company isn't going to want a competitor to be able to use its trademarked name for research into what may well become a competing product.

The clause only covers academic research, not R&D by businesses. Then again, smart businesses know that doing so, despite being legal and reasonable, would taint them with bad name enough to get significant loss of revenue by boycotts from students, academicians and institution staff along with their families. What they usually do to counteract this is to add specific clauses that the name usage is cleared as long as the results are patented under them instead of the institutions who conduct it.

Speaking of researches funded by businesses, it's usually caused by the businesses want to market the resulting product under a different name but the researchers, not knowing this used existing names. As the result, they pull off the funding then sue the research team along with the educational institution.

edited 15th Aug '14 7:53:23 PM by murazrai

Hmm...no one's responding. Move on to the next one.

Due to how advertising laws work, anything that is restricted to a license or copyright clauses cannot be advertised with words like "on sale", "in stores", "buy" and "purchase". This pretty much killed most forms of software and music advertising.

The arcade scene, however benefited from this with the concept of sourceware. Arcade hardware manufacturer collaborates with small game development teams to make arcade games and then sell the hardware, game along with the source code and advertising them as such.

Somehow I severely fucking doubt that industries would do anything that would hurt their business like that. Since, you know, advertising that you have a product is how you fucking sell it. So far all your laws violate common sense in very severe ways. Also, you really ought to explain WHY it's so if you want this to make sense rather than just saying it is. The second paragraph makes about as much sense as the first. And seriously, if videogame hardware manufacturers and game designers can figure out how to survive a disastrous ban on advertising, I fail to see why the music and software industries couldn't.

Oddly enough the dead baby argument reminds of something in my own work: currently there's two reactions in humans to death. Since they now have a chance of rising from the dead some either preserve the bodies on the off chance that'll happen (only happens to like ten percent of them) and other people prefer to cremate them to let them stay at rest. And, for the zombie folk, cremation is legally required once they die a second time so nothing else happens. (And any of their body can be found.)

The legal status of A.I.s also differ; in some areas they're flat out illegal. For folks like the human Travelers and the Eshti they're legally people. And in the case of the Travelers, rather dependent on them as they're part of the ships.

I'm going to be blunt: every one of the laws you've proposed would leave me, as a reader, shaking my head and saying "This makes no sense!" (At least, that's what I'd say if I was feeling tactful. "fucking pants-on-head stupid" is more likely what I'd really call it.) If they are central to understanding the society, I would very likely put the work down and never pick it up again, after the second or third one.

That is to protect consumer rights. When you purchase something, you fully own it and you can do anything with it (barring anything against human rights and civil liberties, that is). If your use of what you have purchase is restricted, you no longer actually buy it anymore and consumer rights groups consider it a misinformation in advertising. This is actually has some basis in the sense that Apple do remind people that the music that they have purchased in iTunes are actually licenses, not the music themselves. I agree with the rest of your criticisms, though.

Hmm...that means I got some serious rework on my worldbuilding skills. Those things are stuffs on my previous work that I abandoned quite some time that I decide to share. My current work has yet to be worldbuilt to that point yet and I'll make sure that it will make sense to someone else before I actually put it into my curent work. Even then, they are more or less trivia.

Now, with your criticisms on mind, here's the next one:

Protected symbols regarding lifesaving and rescue organizations are perfectly legal for civilian use, but still cannot be falsely used. This is because under the same war convention any misuse of the symbols and attacks on most vehicles, buildings and equipment bearing them are punishable as if war took place if the judges seem fit, such as using a civilian clinic as a front for a terrorist group or invasion force. Normal misuse of these symbols during peace times are given slightly lighter punishments, though.

To be fair to the legislators, several wars erupt because of attacks on paramedic and firefighting vehicles and buildings during peace times which caused deaths of national leaders. Destruction of lifesaving and rescue buildings in addition of communication infrastructure near the borders is a major starting attack before war is formally declared to cripple enemy nation's war waging capacity prior to the legislation as well. Medical and rescue supplies takes time to get replaced if they gets destroyed and fighting against enemy who lack medical and rescue support is more "winnable" those who have one.

edited 25th Aug '14 6:07:30 AM by murazrai