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Before you go on a multiple-year trip accessible only by hyperspace relay, you download every out-of-copyright-work of art, literature or science your civilization has ever produced and stick it on your ship's computer. You do this even if you are, frankly, kind of dumb; it is just the obvious thing to do. You are not going to think of everything you need, and no matter HOW confident you are that five-dimensional math is beyond you or that you have no interest in the works of Falazon-2114, some conceivable emergency might mean that you need to repair a damaged hyperdrive or persuade a colony founded on his works that they desperately need to join the League, and when it is essentially costless to take everything, that is what you do.
This, at any rate, is common knowledge known even to the pilot of the Finite But Extremely Large Bounty, whose true name is a thirty-six digit hexadecimal string and whose usename incorporates sounds found not only not in English, but not in any language spoken by dogs, chimpanzees, mosquitoes, or any other entity that does not prefer to communicate exclusively via signal broadcast. We can call him Nau, or Fodion, or GODDAMN IT, since these are all noises he is going to make very, very soon.
Not that any emergency has hit. No, he's had a peaceful trip; no need to exercise self-control, no need to make decisions calling for twice his intelligence, just regular drop-offs of signal beacons to mark his progress and slightly less regular placement of mining replicators on the occasional unusually valuable asteroid; when the pickup ship comes in his wake, it will find the asteroids neatly sorted into their component materials, all carefully packaged and floating by the beacons for immediate delivery to the nearest orbital factory. He's been being choosier than most miners would, with his beacons, but the whole point of taking a job mining asteroids is so you can generate positive value for the world without ever having to interact with any part of it that is not best primarily understood with reference to Newtonian motion, and the longer his trip, the more he can stay in his cabin, reading books written when the League's average IQ was three standard deviations lower than it is today and even mostly following them.
And as long as no emergency hits, that's exactly what he's going to be able to keep doing. He sets his hyperdrive going and -
The green trots off and returns with the blue, who bows politely. "Hello, I'm Kota Untfa. He said you wanted to send a message to the government? What part of the government?"
How do diplomat people talk?
"I would like to prevent a diplomatic problem that might happen when my people learn about you. I don't know enough about your government to know who to talk to. I don't want doing this to cause you diplomatic problems today, so I'm trying to do it quietly."
There. That sounds... kind of the way diplomat people talk?
... Is anyone else in earshot? Obvious earshot?
"... We have a - sentient rights code - that we expect people to follow. I are worried because Tapa seems very nice, but it does not follow it. I can highlight the relevant section in the data dump, but it is in the data dump, so everyone who heard the broadcast will know when they pay attention."
"Okay, that does sound like something we should know about. Do you have an email? I can tell the people whose department that would be to email you."
"They're already giving out fourth spire emails? Mine's second spire..." mutters the blue, writing this down. "All right, you should get an email soon."
It brings him to his inbox, which has an email, subject line "Untfa asked my dept. to get in touch with you..."
This is Tashi Tosuk from International Compliance. I was alerted that you have a heads-up for us about some more international compliance we might be responsible for soon (at least, we all hope it's soon). Is it simple enough to tell me about over email, or should I come by the site in person?
It's good that they already have a department for handling this.
He doesn't say that.
My civilization, Imai*, is part of a larger organization, the League of Meridiana, which I expect Tapa would like to be associated with, because it comes with default-unless-renegotiated free trade, technology sharing and stellar defense treaties. The League has rules for respecting the rights of individuals it expects its members to follow which I included in the datadump. The full text of them is here: [link] and the relevant section is here: [link]. I wanted to sort this out quietly because I'm worried about diplomatic problems when official contact happens, or else someone on Amenta using it to cause trouble for Tapa beforehand.
*: Designation for civilization used by or when speaking to people who can't feel radio.
I'll get right on reading that and seeing where we might not be conforming to our neighbors' requirements! Can you explain why it would lead to other Amentans causing problems for Tapa?
I appreciate your discretion in getting in touch with my department, thank you very much.
And Tashi Tosuk gets to work on reading the pertinent bits.
The specifically pertinent bits are on collective punishment! If he reads back a bit, the treaty is actually three separate ones, for countries affiliated with the League who are not capable of running themselves, countries that are basically culturally identical to the League and want to fully integrate with it, and countries that are fully functional but that want to maintain autonomy while still enjoying trade/mutual defense/tech sharing treaties. Nau helpfully linked to one of the bits in the third, least binding treaty, which (if Tashi Tosuk searches far enough) has a nice preamble explaining that No Really We Understand And Can Try To Negotiate Alternatives That Leave Both Of Us Happy But We Take These Principles Seriously And Are Absolutely Not Going To Back Down, albeit very politely and poetically written.
The pertinent bits define 'collective punishment' as punishing one person for something he did not, in fact, do. There are exceptions for conspiracy and criminal negligence, but 'punishing children for the crimes of their parents' is very explicitly included as forbidden, along with 'punishing parents for the crimes of their children', 'punishing villages for the actions of one member of that village', and 'punishing members of a legal organization for something other members of the organization did,' and all of these behaviors are explicitly banned 'because it is wrong to convict the innocent for crimes of which they are not guilty' and 'because it is wrong to harm people because of things they had no option not to do'.
Does it have a clear definition of a "punishment" as opposed to an undesirable consequence of some other motive? It has to, right, you have to be able to disband organizations if they keep throwing terrorists or something even if you can't pin something on every individual member of the organization and normally disbanding somebody's organization is not something you do when you are being generally friendly with them but come on.
Yes! If Tashi Tosuk reads more of the treaty, Tashi can be reasonably certain that disbanding organizations on suspicion is something they disapprove of but are not going to kick you out over, but that governments judicially causing the death of their own citizens unless it is punishing them for a crime of which they have been convicted is very explicitly forbidden always and everywhere.
Are you aware of any respects in which we don't currently meet these standards besides Tapa's unique population control strategy?
Oh no, could there be other ways? Nau hopes not.
No, that was the only thing I noticed.
Okay, thank you very much for the heads up! There are some preexisting movements to scale down to the system we're using in our protectorates; with this impetus I'd expect those factions to have it all squared away by next spring.
... Nau is not a COMPLETE idiot. He suspects strongly that they only did that because they didn't want to look bad in front of aliens who could cure death and give them hyperdrives.
Which means he just saved the lives of... how many babies a year? By the average numbers?