What rights do indentures have in the inner system? Can they be sold, raped, murdered? Do they have the right to stand in court and offer testimony or bring a cause of action? Can the terms of their indentures be unilaterally altered? Can they be forced to sleeve into whatever morph their master demands?
Is their a section of the canon that deals with these questions?
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Rights of indentures in the inner system.
Wed, 2012-03-14 12:43
#1
trygerbytes117
Rights of indentures in the inner system.
Thu, 2012-03-15 03:00
#2
Tyrnis
Re: Rights of indentures in the inner system.
Indentures do have some degree of rights, but the extent of these are going to vary pretty dramatically based on who has their contract and local laws.
An indenture cannot be sold, no -- that would be slavery. That said, their contracts can be, so the difference isn't necessarily terribly large.
Rape and murder are almost assuredly not legal, insofar as you wouldn't consider indentured prostitution to be rape, at least.
I would think they would have full rights to stand in court or to file charges in court, although this is going to be easier for some than others -- good luck doing either if your job has you sleeved in a synth to mine an asteroid that's weeks of travel from anywhere. There's also a reasonable chance that an indenture is under NDAs with regard to their company, so testimony could potentially violate the terms of their contract. Likewise, look at the mandatory mediation policies that companies have today -- a hypercorp could very easily mandate mediation (which would be heavily stacked in favor of the company)...so there are ways the hypercorps can get around some of these things perfectly legally.
The type of morph they'll sleeve into is almost assuredly at the discretion of the contract holder, yes, so the indenture just has to take what they're given, here. Once they complete their term of indenture, however, the type of morph they'll get to keep is likely to be specified in the contract.
The terms of indentures cannot be unilaterally altered, no. That said, they can and often are designed with stipulations, fees, and penalties built in that can significantly prolong the length of the contract.
Thu, 2012-03-15 03:50
#3
Decivre
Re: Rights of indentures in the inner system.
Going off of historical indenture law, they do still count as people. Murder and rape against indentures is likely still considered illegal. They are still people in the common sense, but the nature of their contracts gives their "owners" special jurisdiction.
For one thing, the indenture contract likely explicitly request the indenture to sign over certain rights. Inner system political blocs recognize these waivers as part and parcel to the system, so will allow it. Most contracts likely have common elements civil rights and treatment... you effectively sign away your usual legal rights. This probably doesn't extend to the primaries, such as your right to live, but could include waivers for such thing as memories during your indenture, voting rights (if you are a citizen) and assault waivers (if they should decide to use physical "encouragement" to keep you working).
Most importantly, your contract will detail the length of your indenture, and probably have clauses which, if violated by you, will involve the punitive response of an extension to your indenture length. This is why, as the books detail, many 5 year contracts can extend two more decades beyond that. Hypercorps and other indenture owners know how to use your contract against you, and keep you under lock and key.
There isn't much info regarding indentures yet, mainly statistics and such. However, indenture servitude is a historical institution, so you can get a lot of inspiration just reading up on it.
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Thu, 2012-03-15 04:23
#4
Arenamontanus
Re: Rights of indentures in the inner system.
Agree with Tyrnis on most of these.
The important thing to remember about indenture is that it is regulated by law, and that law is likely at least partially Consortium/Constellation-wide. There might be localities where the hypercorp "owning" the polity makes up laws to suit itself perfectly and the expense of anybody else, but I expect they will get a visit of nasty Oversight bureaucrats making a fuss over trade barriers and treaty breaches fairly instantly. And both the PC and MC are democracies and recognize citizens as having rights. Indentures are citizens and have the right to vote in local elections, for example (and presumably to field their own candidates if they want to).
The downside is that these rights are practically rather circumscribed. As Tyrnis pointed out, NDAs and other contractual regulations can prevent plenty of activity. Maybe not testifying about crimes in court (but that will not stop company lawyers from making you think it) but plenty of other things. For example, the indenture trying to act as an independent candidate might find that it cannot use any company resources to do it - which includes their morph and even that restorative psychosurgery they had. Good luck.
Then there are the really iffy things like having forks that are deleted or have a high risk of being killed. With the right contract they can be legal: the person agreeing to it is around and has - on paper - a really nice backup insurance. Too bad that it involves him getting killed left and right. Sunward mentions both the practice of resetting indenture time if people lose an expensive body and have to be restored from backup (apparently legal in the MC) and the practice of super-forking indentures and then merging them together (now ruled illegal in the PC). But ruthless and clever businessbeings can probably come up with many other ideas - and find people willing to accept them.
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