Rule of law, Rule of sponsors
Yesterday, I covered the FIFA courts in South Africa: a commercial/politically-motivated streaming of Cup crime above all others, drawing particularly unfair punishments, all processed in record time. Constitutionally, that’s really quite troubling.
But commercial sport’s casts more shadows on the law than that. Let’s not forget the orange ladies that dared to wear minidresses. Part of a commercial conspiracy by Bavaria Beer to get ‘free’ advertising on the back of the World Cup, they faced charges of "unauthorised commercial activities inside an exclusion zone" and "enter[ing] into a designated area while in unauthorised possession of a commercial object".
Under diplomatic pressure from the Dutch government, the charges were dropped. Yet somewhat incredibly, the UK government has also seen fit to make commercial use of certain words (like “Gold” or “2012”) a criminal offence once the Games roll into town – I shit you not).
Here’s a quick lesson in how commercial interests get to set criminal law in this country:
Corporations, if they really suffered damages, could potentially sue. But then, the poor sponsors are faced with the hassle of going after minidress wearers, in tort law, or the people the sponsors bought their ad exclusivity from (in London 2012’s case, the IOC and LOCOG), in contract law.
So the sponsors have a good ol’ moan (in SA, to FIFA; for the Games, to Seb Coe); these then bring their weight to bear on our governments, who then crack the whip over their legislature in order to pass draconian criminal laws.
How nice: I’ll have to remember that next time I go into commerce, I should just get the state to make some special criminal laws making it a special criminal offence for people to tread on my special business toes. Much better than having to get my own lawyers involved to sort out my own commercial problems – I can just send the cops in. And who knows; maybe we should even do what the South Africans do: fast-track it through a special system of steroid-addled courts, at huge financial outlay.
Even the Chinese government didn’t think it appropriate to go down this route for Beijing 2008. But clearly, the West is unwavering in its commitment to democracy and the rule of law and gets to repeatedly poke the Chinks in the eye with how bloomin awesome our constitutions are. Especially during their Olympics.
One can only hope they think to return the favour.
Related:
- Jabulani Justice
- Faced with the hassle of suing companies like Bavaria or other ‘rogue advertisers’ and minidress wearers, it’s quite clear that FIFA or the Olympics find it far easier to just get our governments to pass draconian criminal laws to ‘get em’ instead. That means that this is a legal system set up (obviously) to placate their commercial interests, not by offering them an opportunity to go after those causing them economic loss, but to pillory – criminally – a few chosen examples. And the South Africans do it in a system of special, steroid-addled courts, at huge financial outlay. Even the Chinese government didn’t ...
- On coding, and writing contracts
- It would be interesting to know what more the world of software development could teach the law profession. After all, it's possible to perceive a contract as software: a program that 'runs' and defines a relationship. The parties to the contract are the hardware; the program tells them what to do, and when it's done running, the output is, well, the set of contractual objectives - or alternatively, like any good program, in the event that the hardware malfunctions, the program handles the error; a contract handles the dispute resolution process. A bad program throws a Blue Screen of Death; a bad contract results in a very costly lawsuit. Read on for more speculation and a set of coding principles that, surprisingly, might apply to contract writing......
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