Old Empire (Alien Interview)
The Old Empire is the designation used by Domain forces for an ancient galactic civilization that, according to the Alien Interview transcripts, controls Earth as a prison planet. The Old Empire is headquartered in a star system in the tail of what humans call the Big Dipper constellation.
Prison system
Earth functions as a penal colony for "criminals, misfits, and rebels" from across the galaxy. When IS-BEs die and leave their bodies on Earth, they are captured by an electronic screen positioned in the upper atmosphere, given amnesia (their memories of previous lives erased and sometimes replaced by false memories), and returned to Earth in new bodies to continue serving the prison.
Lawrence R. Spencer summarized the arrangement: "Earth has, for a very long time, been being used as a prison planet by an element of the Old Empire governmental body, which is acting as a secret society."
Domain opposition
The Domain — the civilization to which Airl belongs — is described as opposing the Old Empire and working to eventually liberate IS-BEs trapped on Earth. Approximately 3,000 Domain expeditionary force members were captured by Old Empire agents on Earth, killed, and subjected to the amnesia process, their IS-BEs now cycling through human incarnations unaware of their original identity.
Parallels in other contact accounts
Elena Danaan's contact material describes an equivalent soul-trap system around Earth — electronic memory-erasure technology preventing accumulated spiritual knowledge from carrying forward between incarnations — though she attributes the technology to the Nebu and Draco reptilians rather than the Old Empire.
Alex Collier's Andromedan contacts described Earth as a planet whose human population was being "used as livestock" — a parallel to the prison-planet framework with different operational terminology.