British Men Jailed For Online Hate Crimes

chrb writes "Two British men have become the first to be jailed for inciting racial hatred online. The men believed that material they published on web servers based in the United States did not fall under the jurisdiction of UK law and was protected under the First Amendment. This argument was rejected by the British trial judge. After being found guilty, the men fled to Los Angeles, where they attempted to claim political asylum, again arguing that they were being persecuted by the British government for speech that was protected under the First Amendment. The asylum bid was rejected and the two were deported back to the UK after spending over a year in a US jail."

Comments

whats the crime in hate crime?

[biscon]

is it the act of hating someone due to their racial background or sexual orientation which is illegal? or just running your mouth about it?. if its the former its thought crime and if its the latter its censorship. I don't believe in hate crime, not because I am a racist or a homofob its just that laws like that tend to be abused. Besides I like living in a free society where the government doesn't get to decide what I can legally think.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[RsG]

"Hate crime" is a blanket term for laws that regulate speech with the intent of suppressing racism. More recently this has expanded to include homophobia. How those laws are viewed largely depends on whether the viewer feels more strongly about bigotry or censorship; whether you see a greater evil in suppression of speech or unreasoning hatred.

I'd call censorship the greater evil, but despite that I'm ambivalent about this particular case. On the one hand, I do not think such a law ought to exist at all, on the other hand, I just can't muster any outrage at a neo-Nazi getting jailed. I suspect that it's cases like this that allow such laws to remain in effect - try to oppose the law on principle and you'll find yourself in the position of having to defend the bigots, something that even those most committed to free speech find repellent.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[clarkkent09]

I don't believe in hate crime, not because I am a racist or a homofob its just that laws like that tend to be abused.

I don't believe in hate speech crime, not because I am a racist or a homophobe but because I believe in the right of individuals to think and to say whatever the fuck they want without somebody shutting their mouth by force or putting them in jail for it. Laws prohibiting hate speech don't have to be abused to be wrong, they are also wrong when functioning as intended. If you disagree with racists or homophobes feel free to say so, but don't use the force of government to shut them up because you are replacing one evil with a greater one. And besides, is there an easier thing to argue against and to ridicule than the irrational and primitive nonsense that such people tend to say. Why would you even need such laws is beyond me. I am only sorry that the US government is not willing to step up and protect people from other countries, however odious their beliefs might be, who are persecuted at home for no greater crime than speaking their mind and who seek refuge here.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

Hate crime laws don't suppress racism... they might suppress public expression of racism, but people will still hate privately, likely using the hate crime laws themselves as a valid excuse to promote hate to others. "Look at James Byrd, they gave two of the three white guys that dragged him to death the death penalty and the other life, while the three black guys that did the same thing to Ken Tillery got 15, 20 and 70 years..." It's hard to enforce the law equally when the purpose of the law is to setup specific protected classes and that will result in more division.

IMO, it's much better to get people to express themselves publicly since it gives them an avenue to vent while simultaneously allowing you to deflate their arguments before they can spread the hate.

I live in NY... and you'll hear lots of people saying they were proud to vote for a black man for President, but those same people moved when blacks started encroaching on their white neighborhoods, send their kids to mostly white private schools, etc. While they publicly talk a good game, they still don't want to be around "those kind of people" privately. That undertone of racism is allowed to go unchallenged though, largely because as long as the racism isn't overtly public, it "isn't" really racism. I'd argue refusing to let your kids go to school with someone of a different color isn't much different from beating someone else up for being a different color. The same hate exists, just expressed differently... Sure, one is a violent crime which deserves a penalty in its own right, but the other goes completely unpunished and undiscussed.

Ultimately, if we want racism (and sexism, homophobia, etc) to end, we need to stop drawing lines to divide people into different camps and giving special treatment to "the right groups." Anything short of equal treatment breeds a hate itself.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Your definition of "thought crime" as "muttering to yourself" is completely bogus trivializing.

As for the tolerance of "hate speech" creating a freer and safer society here - the difference between the US and most of the rest of the world is we let it all hang out - the good, the bad and the ugly so that we get public discourse and an eventual meeting of the minds, even if it does take a generation or two and a lot of nasty words to get there. We are the most ethnic and culturally integrated country in the world in part because of that - contrast that to all the states with laws against insulting groups, your immigrants are far, far less integrated into mainstream society.

You can't fight bad words with censorship, only good words in response to bad words can do that. Censorship just takes away the opportunity for someone to respond with good words.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[c6gunner]

I live in NY... and you'll hear lots of people saying they were proud to vote for a black man for President, but those same people moved when blacks started encroaching on their white neighborhoods, send their kids to mostly white private schools, etc. While they publicly talk a good game, they still don't want to be around "those kind of people" privately.

That's complete nonsense. They don't live in those neighborhoods and send their children to those schools because they want racial segregation - they do it because those neighborhoods and those schools are upper-class environments where their children can prosper without having to worry excessively about crime or violence, and because those schools tend to offer a better quality of education. Parents who can afford to send their kids to a private school don't start the selection process by saying "hrm, let's see which school has the fewest negros" - they send their children to the best school they can find. Unfortunately, due to the economic discrepancy between the races, those schools tend to have fewer black students, but you're confusing correlation with causation.

You know, it's like you went out to a rich neighborhood, looked at the kind of cars most of them drive, and then concluded that rich people must be massively pro-German. It makes no sense.

As for the whole "proud to vote for a black man" thing ... that IS racist. If you're more proud to vote for a particular candidate due to his race, you're a bigot, regardless of whether he's black, white, green, or purple.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most people do. And these days, that's all you need to throw someone in jail forever: The consent of the people.

Who are "most people"? Do you have a cite or statistics to back this up? I didn't think so.

The fact of the matter is (and I'm a centrist Democrat) that minority groups of various persuasions have squealed to the media about hate motivated crimes and laws have been put through by self-righteous cappuccino Dems while vilifying anybody who dares oppose it.

I'm from Cincinnati (yeah, we've got one hell of a past, check dangerous neighborhood listings and witness our #1 glory) and I've seen it happen: five white guys beat the shit out of a black guy and it's a hate crime. Five black guys beat the shit out of a white guy and it's just a "crime"... in fact it's business as usual. I work in the engineering field and I personally know three engineers (including a female) who have been assaulted while trying to get to data centers on off-hours calls. Hint: all the perps were black and all the victims were white.

You can bleat anecdote and I can show you trends.

There are just as many black racists here as there are white. I lost count of how many times I've been called cracker, honkey, casper, etc. Just for walking down the street. I've spoken to others, and yes, it's the norm. I'm a pretty big guy so nobody ever acts on it (and I'm a prior military CCW if they do), but for more "average" people you're pretty much screwed.

And remember, when you're getting your teeth kicked out in the gutter for being a stupid white motherfucker in "our" part of town during the night, it's not a hate crime. We just don't like you straight white folks.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[lgw]

The hate crimes legislation comes into play, at least in the US, when it crosses from just expression to incitement of violence or represents a threat to other people's safety. This isn't really that fine of a line, I'm not aware of cases going forward where it wasn't terribly obvious that it had crossed the line sometime previously.

I agree completely Citizen! The fact that it was already illegal to incite violence was inadequate - that only protected public safety, and did nothing to deter BadThink. We must trust the Leaders to guide us towards GoodThink at all times! Inciting violence because you lack thought process approved by our Leader is far, far worse than otherwise inciting violence, because it's more important to stop BadThink than violence any day.

Jailing MPs who argue in parliament against the positions of the ruling party could only happen in the UK, here our Leaders are firm supporters of free speech and would never abuse power in any way!

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[timeOday]

I think the US and UK must have different definitions of "hate crime." In the US, it's an act that would have been a crime anyways, but motivated by any of a specific list of taboos. In the UK, apparently the speech is a crime in itself, even if nobody gets hurt.

Though the US version seems ripe for abuse, it still seems more sensible than the UK version, and I don't think the US version is totally unreasonable. Take the recent holocaust museum shooting... a white man murders a black guard in an attack on a symbol of Judaism. Clearly it was a hate crime - not against blacks, even though that's the only person he murdered - but against Jews. But he didn't just think about hating Jews, he took forcible action to terrorize them, so I can at least see the rationale in some extra punishment for that, on top of murdering a guy.

Speaking of the murder of the guard, cop killers get harsher sentences too, likely including death, since cops represent a symbolic group with extra risks - in other words, a hate crimes. I wonder if all those against special protections for minority groups are also against harsher penalties for killing cops, assassinating heads of state, etc?

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[RsG]

I agree completely Citizen! The fact that it was already illegal to incite violence was inadequate - that only protected public safety, and did nothing to deter BadThink. We must trust the Leaders to guide us towards GoodThink at all times! Inciting violence because you lack thought process approved by our Leader is far, far worse than otherwise inciting violence, because it's more important to stop BadThink than violence any day.

The trouble with busting out 1984 references and parodies every time this happens is it cheapens them to the point of irrelevance. If every infringement upon liberty, no matter how significant, is called tyranny, than what shall real tyranny be called?

Orwell would probably be troubled by the direction we're heading in. He'd also probably be appalled at how silly we've made his (legitimate) concerns look to the world.

1984 is a chilling look at how the world could become if we let it, it is not raw material for constructing alarmist strawmen.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[c6gunner]

Who said they were rich?

Relatively rich.

When I moved to Canada, my family didn't have much money and we lived in one of the worst areas in the city. We had plenty of neighbors of all sorts of races and religions, and it didn't bother me a bit - I was mainly worried about the daily robberies and assaults, the drug addicts in the stairwells, and dog-shit being left in the hallways. So as soon as we saved enough money to afford better accommodations, we moved.

We moved again, 3 more times in the following 10 years. During each move, our new area was less "diverse" than the last one. According to your world-view, that means we're horrible bigots who hate minorities. In reality it's just a case of us being able to accumulate wealth, and preferring to live in a cleaner, safer environment, surrounded by people who care about their neighborhood. I wouldn't give a damn if 90% of my neighbors were black as long as the quality of the people and the maintenance of the area remained the same. Race isn't the problem - crime, violence, and shitty attitudes are. If I lived in an all-white neighborhood where I had to worry about crime, violence, drug addicts in the stairwells and dog-shit in the the hallways, I'd move out of that area too. What would that make me - a Self-Hating-Caucasian?

And no, neither I nor the rest of my family is "rich" even now, but we are a hell of a lot better off than we were when we got here, and could certainly be considered rich when compared to the people who still inhabit our original neighborhood.

Re:whats the crime in hate crime?

[PopeRatzo]

slowly wiping out Liberty in the West and replacing it with Tyrannical Socialist government.

Pal, I don't think you have any idea what "Tyrannical" or "Socialist" really means. You're just parroting corporate-sponsored Right-Wing AM radio talking points. You think that because you jump up and salute every time Rush or Hannity or Sarah Palin or some UK neo-nazi hollers is showing some sort of "love of Freedom", but you're really just reacting to a careful marketing plan put in place by corporate powers who feel cheated when someone on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder makes ten cents more per hour. If we give everyone health care, after all, how are we going to force them to keep working for wages? If we educate people, after all, how are we going to fill the factories with minimum wage workers? If people stop believing in their patriarchal God the Father, expecting to go to heaven, they're going to expect better lives now and want to keep from fouling their planet, which would be bad for profits.

When you try to suggest that any Western European or North American country is headed for "Tyrannical Socialism" you display the kind of ignorance that you'd expect from someone who uses a sig like "Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". You're ready to believe any kind of crap that you're told, as long as it comes with a heaping dose of hatred of people with darker skin or funny accents.

You say that the idea of "hate speech" laws are a tool to take away our freedoms. What do you think of laws that use the word "terrorism" to do the same? It's OK, because those laws are aimed at the muslims, but hate speech laws are aimed directly at your own hate-filled self. Your misplaced fear is not that hate crime acts are going to take away your freedom, but that your very world-view is called into question. You're so in love with your own hatred and ignorance that you're afraid someone's going to take it away like a favorite blanket.

You'd be pitiful if you weren't such a danger. You have this notion that there was some magical period in our history when we were "Free" and had "Liberty" and even though you can't point to any such period on a time-line, you're eager to turn the clock back as long as it means that you can go back to feeling superior to the wogs.

And don't try to say "You don't know me," because I've spent enough time in red state America and the rural UK to know folk like you like the back of my own hand.

The UK does not have free speech.

[Bartab]

If you can't say something other people don't want to hear, you do not have free speech.

There is no such thing as "jurisdiction" any more.

[EWAdams]

Israelis arrest (and indeed assassinate) enemies of Israel anywhere they like. Ditto the USA. A California couple publishes porn on the Internet in California, and is tried and convicted in Tennessee, which they have never visited. You can do something in a foreign country that's totally legal there, and your own government will still prosecute you for it -- as these guys did. It's only a matter of time before the USA starts prosecuting American citizens for smoking dope and visiting prostitutes in Amsterdam.

The fact is, if you publish it on the web, you're liable for it worldwide, regardless of where you are or where the server is. Better get used to it.

Freedom of speach is not a right to lie.

[BlueParrot]

Whenever somebody makes the nonsensical claim that it is unacceptable to censor racist or homophobic propaganda because it is a free speech issue, consider the following examples.

1: You're not allowed to harass people, even if you do so by speaking.

3: You're not allowed to tell people lies in order to make them agree to things they otherwise would not ( i.e fraud ).

4: You are not allowed to print untrue stories that may damage somebody's reputation ( i.e libel ).

5: You're not allowed to damage people's reputation by spreading lies about them ( i.e slander )

The main problem with the laws against racism and homophobia is that they have been poorly named. They should have called it "The protection against harassment of minorities act" or something like it. As with all other liberties your freedom ends where mine begins, and just like freedom of movement does not entitle you to sleep in my front-yard, nor does freedom of speech entitle you to spread lies about my sexual orientation. If you seriously think that freedom of speech gives you a right to lie about and harass people, then I'm afraid you have a rather naive idea of how the world works and you may just find that a lot of people with disagree with you.

Re:The US has limits on it too. Thankfully.

[arethuza]

May I ask why Americans get so upset about flag buring? If I were to burn a Scottish flag here in Edinburgh the only thing that would happen is that a Japanese tourist would take my picture. If I burned a Union Jack, or especially the blue with with stars, it is possible I could get a round of applause from the locals.