03 Oct 2014, 02:50 am
Statement from Justice Michael Kingston:
Quote:The case against the State claims that 18 IP addresses were unlawfully prevented from accessing the Republic of Mercury forum. This focuses on three main points:
Under Section 4a of the Citizenship and Immigration Act [2014], all people have right to entry, except where disallowed by the Supreme Court.
Under Section 4b of the Citizenship and Immigration Act [2014], a person may only be denied entry by the Supreme Court.
Under Article 21a of the Constitution, the right to enter the Republic of Mercury is clearly set out, and as such, it is unconstitutional to deny entry to the forum.
The State refutes these claims as follows:
Section 4a of the Citizenship and Immigration Act [2014] allows all people the right to entry, but spambot accounts are automated, and as such are not covered by this legislation.
The State reiterates this point in rebuttal to the claim that Section 4b of the same Act has been violated.
Article 21a of the Constitution clearly states that every citizen has the right to enter. The Citizenship and Immigration Act [2014] is simply an extension of this right to people that do not hold citizenship, but have not been disallowed entry by the Supreme Court.
It also claims that before a large number of accounts were deleted in July 2014, these accounts had committed treason by disrupting the working of the Government and causing damage to property of the State.
The opinion of the Court with regards to Article 21a of the Constitution is that the State has no case to answer, and is therefore cleared of any wrongdoing in relation to this particular charge.
The Court agrees with the State's contention that the accounts deleted in July 2014 had committed an act of treason, and as such, the deletion of these accounts is lawful under Section 5a of the Crimes Against the People Act [2013].
The Court believes that the Citizenship and Immigration Act [2014] is ambiguous in that the term 'person' is used, but this is not defined anywhere within Mercurian law. Due to the large scale of disruption caused in July 2014, it is understandable that the Government implemented a policy of deleting accounts showing characteristics of being a spambot, such as the username not matching the email address, email addresses created on temporary servers, multiple accounts created from the same IP address and usernames containing seemingly random strings of characters. The Government did attempt to take steps to make it more difficult to register an account on the forum, but this only served to reduce the number of accounts created, not to eradicate the problem altogether. When taking all of this into consideration, it would be difficult for the Court to find that spambots are covered under the Citizenship and Immigration Act [2014], and as such, it clears the State of any wrongdoing in relation to both charges referring to the Citizenship and Immigration Act [2014].