Am I Allowed

Purpose

Mission: Provide free information about how every law and rule in the world applies to every person in every language.

Details of the goals we are trying to achieve:

1. To help common people understand the law better. This is by far the largest goal. Laws in any single location are extremely complex. To make it harder each country has it's own set of laws, and many of the laws within a country vary by state, region, city, suburb, etc... Yes, it's possible to check the local printed material or websites for the governing authority (whoever that may be) of the location you're in, but that could be very time consuming and could involve local knowledge. Most countries state variants of "ignorantia juris non excusat", or "ignorance of the law does not excuse". This is generally to avoid wilful blindness or deceptively stating blindness of the law as the basis of claiming innocence. The problem is that it is not practical for a person to memorise the laws in every country and region they visit, let alone in the region they live.

2. To allow comparison between rules of different locations. This can be done by both common people and law makers. Hopefully after comparison, laws will be made to be somewhat more standardized and simplified. For example, why is supervised under age drinking allowed in some American states, and up to a $5000 fine in others? In Dubai, many prescription drugs that are legal in most other countries will get you four years in jail before deportation. Being realistic, in the near future it isn't likely that all countries will standardize on one set of "world laws" and they probably shouldn't. But I believe that should always be the goal, and there should be a good reason to deviate from the normal.

3. To make the world a better place. As people get more knowledgeable about laws, more people will follow them. Less rules will be broken, less people will be in court, less will be in jail, and we will need less police. Wow, who wouldn't want that!

4. To track rules as well as laws. For example, you're not allowed to smoke inside my house, but outside is fine. You can wear shoes on the tiled areas, but not the carpeted areas. Those are the two major ones that I tell guests, but you might argue that I don't need a computer system to record those and publish for the world to see. Now imagine a football stadium that is on private land. They will have dozens of important rules that their guests must follow or face eviction. If you have a silver class ticket, are you allowed in the bronze section? Can you bring your own drinks from outside? Noise makers? You get the idea, and hopefully the need.

5. To push back against the establishment. Historically governments have worked hard to define laws to keep the people happy and remain in power. The people generally want fair laws, and want their government to enforce them fairly. This site doesn't have a primary purpose of making fair laws or determining how they are enforced. More simply the aim is to document all laws to tell a person who wants to follow the law what is allowed. If the law allows you to club baby seals to death, or beat your wife, that's a moral decision made by the local authorities. This site will tell people what is allowed and where, not what should be allowed. Hopefully gaps continue to close between common ethics and some of the odd laws out there. This site will help to highlight these gaps to allow pressure (through means outside of this site) to be applied to government authorities. This site will always put the people's interests first and therefore before the government's interests.

6. The challenge of building it. To create a real-time database able to compare all rules and laws in all languages. It will never be perfect, but hopefully of very high quality over time.