[PASSED] Astronomical Data Repository Act

[Kenmoria]

OOC:I believe that you're exaggerating

Name the last time the WA did something that benefited the membership as a whole.

(OOC: Officially that’s almost all resolutions passed, if not all of them. I still believe that most of the passed resolutions have had a positive effect, even if the motivations may be less humanitarian. Funnily enough, this proposal would only benefit nations advanced enough to explore space, not anywhere near all of them.)

[Fefelandia]

I mildly support this proposal.

[Barbariax]

What if a nation's government (i.e. state) has an agency (e.g. NASA) which has contracted with a private company (e.g. SpaceX) to license some data? Very common type of agreement. Then the state is in "possession" and is required to submit it to ASTRO per this mandatory requirement. The scope is far too wide. It should be opt-in rather than relying to opt-out based only on tenuous exemptions.

How is ASTRO going to maintain this database of raw astronomical data? Who are the staff going to be? How are they going to be paid? How are private companies going to be compensated for their "voluntary" submissions? As previously noted, such compensation is not going to be fairly negotiated because it is impossible once the market is corrupted. None of these things are spelled out. This being the case, and the proposal likely being financially net negative, the proposal should be rejected on these grounds alone until they are properly addressed clearly within the text itself.

Fundamentally, why should the WA support ASTRO in the first place? Astronomical research is not a bad thing, but this seems like the author's pet project, i.e. excessive "government pork" policy. Why not a similar policy for pharmaceuticals research? Or ocean mapping? Or self-defense technologies? Etc. (All of these examples were previously given.) There is nothing particularly special about this field compared to other fields, so there is no reason to unequally support it with this proposal.

The WA should keep out of such affairs and leave it entirely to member states to engage freely without coercing all members. It is questionable to this state what subsidies a government should give to a favored industry (e.g. automotives), so it is therefore fundamentally the same questionability as to whether a super-governmental body (i.e. the WA) should essentially meddle similarly in a specific field, to an even more extreme and monolithic way as written in this proposal.

Okay I see you are very new to NS. For starters, we do not set things like workers, salaries, market impact, etc for committees, they are implied and not part of the WA. Furthermore, I could happily work on proposals regarding cartography of other spaces.

Secondly, research contractors for NASA is far more complex than you apparently realize, with possession of said data being spelled out in contracts far before this. I'm very sure a private entity could write in a stipulation mandating that they retain full rights to the data they collect if working in conjunction with a government entity. But again this is stemming into a whataboutism argument very quickly. I'll humor it for just a sentence or two tho. In laymans terms, 'space mapping' is not profitable, especially when dealing with raw data. These companies make money is the aggregation and organization of data, which is not at all touched by this resolution. If you want the raw data you can have it. Let me give you an example. Raw data is the equivalent of a dictionary or a string of consecutive words. Pretty useless without an application huh. Where money is made and applied would be in the use of those words to create a book, that you can sell. That book organizes words into chapters, then paragraphs, then sentences. It gives that 'raw data', an easy to use structure. Look at things like law libraries or meteorological data, its useless when you have nothing to guide you.

Also ffr don't use the NatSov argument. It makes you look bad.

Barbariax notes that the defense given by Kranostav is dissatisfactory and does not fundamentally address the concerns raised. However, given the trivial impact of the proposal at hand, there is negative value in attempting to discuss further.

It looks like the proposal will easily be approved, however Barbariax simply notes that not all proposals with popular support are necessarily sound. So it goes.

[Kranostav]

snip

[Sierra Lyricalia]

(OOC: Member states, note member states not member nations, would not have data belonging to private companies. A state is a government ruling over a given area, whereas a nation is a group of people sharing a national identity....

OOC: Entirely moot for this resolution now that it's passed, but for future reference: Generally "nation" and "state" are interchangeable terms on this forum. I know outside of the U.S. "nation" and "state" are very distinct things (the Kurds are a nation without a state, for example), and political science concerns itself partly with "nation-states," a comparatively new feature of the modern (~since the seventeenth century onward) world. But most everyone here understands "member states" = "member nations" for all intents and purposes.

(aside: the main word in English for things happening between states is "international." "Interstate" means "slow autobahn." )

[Kenmoria]

(OOC:

Astronomical Data Repository was passed 16,667 votes to 988.

Well done Kranostav.)

[Victoriaans Nederlands]

(OOC:

Astronomical Data Repository was passed 16,667 votes to 988.

Well done Kranostav.)

I know it's been a few days, but... Holy freaking cow that's a huge ratio. That's a freaking 94.4% approval rate.

[Marxist Germany]

(OOC:

Astronomical Data Repository was passed 16,667 votes to 988.

Well done Kranostav.)

I know it's been a few days, but... Holy freaking cow that's a huge ratio. That's a freaking 94.4% approval rate.

OOC:It's the highest any resolution has received.

[Araraukar]

OOC:It's the highest any resolution has received.

OOC: Which is an indication of how it doesn't do much. People get riled (and vote against) by proposals on disputed issues, or ones that place a lot of restrictions member nations or their people.