Am Fr 31.07.2026 14:25 schrieb damiancoding--- via ghc-devs:
Dear Wolfgang,
You might be surprised to learn that indeed unrecognized or missing proof of citizenship can be devastating, as for example in this commonly cited example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri
This person was effectively without citizenship as they were unable to prove it due to missing documents.
That’s a quite specific situation. However, you had made a claim about stateless persons *in general*, saying that “no one will advocate for” them and “no government will back up legitimate claims around” them “by enforcing laws and regulations”. It’s this general claim that I disputed.
Legal is full of surprises like these and counter-intuitive twists. You can’t use common-sense logic, say “I would be very surprised to learn” and expect that to have much meaning in a legal setting.
It’s not just about my intuition here. I was talking about post-Soviet stateless persons in Estonia, of which there are tens of thousands. If they would effectively be without rights, I would have surely heard about that during the 15 years I’ve been living in Estonia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_alien%27s_passport for some information regarding these people.
I would hope the conversation going forward would stay clear of legal opinions unless they come from someone actively practicing law in copyright either in one of the big markets or international copyright, and that person can prove their active credentials.
I usually don’t speak about legal issues, precisely because law is not my field of expertise. However, you had made an apparently wrong claim and had partly based your argumentation on it. Therefore, I considered it important to dispute this claim. Such corrective statements shouldn’t be hindered based on the fact that the persons making them aren’t lawyers. All the best, Wolfgang