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Manchester's Self-Described 'Internet Troll' Jailed For Offensive Web Posts
noob22 writes "According to BBC Online, 'An "internet troll" who posted obscene messages on Facebook sites set up in memory of dead people has been jailed. Colm Coss, of Ardwick, Manchester, posted on a memorial page for Big Brother star Jade Goody and a tribute site to John Paul Massey, a Liverpool boy mauled to death by a dog. The 36-year-old "preyed on bereaved families" for his "own pleasure," Manchester Magistrates Court heard.'" My favorite line: "Unemployed Coss was only caught when he sent residents on his street photos of himself saying he was an internet 'troll.'"
Why so few posts?
:)
First they came for the trolls...
Then it was a lot quieter?
So if he'd used a megaphone and said to their faces they wouldn't have been able to charge him?
No, they would just charge him under a different law, such as disturbing the peace. They have thousands of laws, so in most cases the police can find something with which to charge you if they put their minds to it.
...it's just another example of how free-speech laws have diverged from today's technology.
How do you figure that? He was successfully convicted under the current laws when using new technology. It seems to me that the law coped quite happily with new technology. Your problem appears to be if he had used old technology.
I love how "computer crimes" are punished on an entirely different scale to regular crimes. You can go bottle someone (break a glass bottle over their head) and you get an average of zero days in jail (suspended for two years). You can go mug someone and get only a week of "hard time" with a year of parole. I mean heck you can go run someone down in your car and still get a lighter sentence than 18 weeks...
There is no level of rationality to computer crime sentences because the "old people" on both sides of the bench are simply too ignorant and out of touch to really know what the crime involved or how serious it was. This case should never have wasted the UK's courts time and public money let alone the cost of keeping him in jail for any period at all.
Frankly I have a VERY low opinion of the police, judge, and state for this one. I want a million pounds spent on arrested serious criminals and keeping them locked away. Give the mugger, violent thug, or drug dealers 18 week sentences instead of saving them for the "omg computer terrurist?! he uses microsoft and word to send deadly communications of doom!"
What's more - he wasn't even punished for threatening people. It is one thing to make threats and to scare people. It is another thing entirely to offend or upset them. While I think the things he said were extremely rude and offensive - nobody felt in fear for their security.
I don't understand it. It seems much worse to me to go to someones funeral or wake and say nasty things about them and yet that's fine.
The guy is a dick but this is ridiculous. It's not illegal to be a dick, nor should it be. Things like this make me worried for the future.
it's under construction
Slightly OT, but I have met men who are sadists without being narcissists or psychopats (not in the BDSM sense, but "I would be euphoric if I set fire to a baby" sense), but who have moral inhibitions that seem sincere reflexive reactions. I cannot possibly begin to understand how these people's minds work subjectively, but I have a folk-psychological intuition I find useful in understanding some of the finer points of Asperger social deficits - on a deep level, all humans assume others to be like ourselves. So such a person might still find it intuitively acceptable to be cruel to others on a regular basis due to the "reward" afforded them, like a normal person would cut someone off in traffic on a rainy monday when late to work. It's just that the reward is completely unknowable to a person who isn't a sadist. One of these people work in the medical industry, and obviously enjoys (again, not just in the gallows humor sense) discussing gory injuries - but I still would consider him a good man. I suspect this is more common than one'd believe.
Emotions! In your brain!
Not at all. If he'd used a megaphone he would have been guilty of Breach of The Peace, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress, or some other equally relevent law. This is a case of the law catching up with modern technology ie. applying the same rules of conduct we have in everyday life to that which occurs online. Now you may disagree with the law and thats another situation all together, but its wrong to claim this is anything but an adaptation of current laws. Heck look at the development of the language used - the Telecommunications Act of 1984 sees alternations in the terminology used from "telecommunication system" to "electronic communications network" along with changes in what those mean. This is the evolution of law to adapt to the new challenges of online communication.
Sadism, deriving pleasure from others pain? Normal people have an emotional reaction when they percieve others suffering, so how easy wouldn't it be for a wire to get crossed and delivering pleasant emotions instead of painful?
Emotions! In your brain!
The biggest threat to democracy is wilfully uninformed voters.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Even in Europe, you can believe what you want. Publicly denying the holocaust might result in fines. If you do it to instigate hatred, you might do some jail time, too.
The guy is a dick but this is ridiculous. It's not illegal to be a dick, nor should it be.
Dickery is illegal when you cross a line which moves around a bit, but we call it "harassment" and it's definitely against the law. This is just another form of harassment and there's no moral reason not to convict him for it if that's what it takes to stop him. If you want to manipulate the mental state of others for personal gain, you must use advertising.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, the biggest threat to democracy is selfish voters. Vote on principal and employ abstract thinking rather than "is this going to reinforce my beliefs or directly reward me with some goodies". You don't have to be extraordinarily empathetic to think that people like the guy in this story (or Lori Drew) are vile human beings that disgust you and make you feel awful for their "victims". It takes a little effort to step outside yourself and recognize that just because something isn't nice or doesn't directly benefit you doesn't mean it isn't right.
The Lori Drew case is a great example of that. Many people found themselves in the shitty position of wanting to see that bitch punished for being an awful human being to a little kid but also comprehending that sometimes doing the right thing means not being satisfied with some sort of retribution.
Thing is there was ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and so it doesn't seems like anyone has learned from it.
I think the fact that the Westboro Baptist Church has been able to continue inflicting emotional pain against grieving families provides a counter example to such implementation in the US.
An "internet troll" who posted offensive messages on the World Wide Web has been revealed to be the Daily Mail.
The Mail "preyed on bereaved families" for its "own pleasure", the Press Complaints Council heard.
The paper was charged with sending malicious communications that were grossly offensive. The posts included comments claiming the victims had brought it upon themselves by being asylum-seeking homosexual Poles who caused EU cancer.
it was only caught when it sent residents copies of itself saying "FREE DVD FOR EVERY READER."
The term "troll" was described in court as someone who creates numerous identities, called "columnists," and then posts offensive bollocks to upset or provoke a reaction from others and gain page hits and advertising revenue.
"You preyed on bereaved families who were suffering trauma and anxiety," said chairwoman of the bench Pauline Salisbury. "We know you gained pleasure and you aren't sorry for what you did."
The paper has been convicted of sending "malicious communications" and the editor has been given a knighthood and a rôle as official advisor on government policy.
The defence raised possible mental health issues, but this was dismissed by the bench.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Asperger's is the new sheik.
Asperger's is the new Arabian tribal elder?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Thing is, Yugoslavia was one of the "victorious" countries, so they were never subjected to strict laws about ethnic cleansing, despite history Serbia has of doing it to neighboring nations, e.g. Bulgaria.
So, you could argue that the seeds for later problems were planted by the policy that excused any and all war crimes, perpetrated by the winning parties.
"Not harassment?"
Who decides what is offensive and what is not? I find it shocking how many people here seem to be against freedom of speech, or at least speech that offends them. In fact, your very post is offensive to me in and of itself. You need to be jailed, and fast!
"denying it happened is to disrespect the dead"
Freedom of speech. The dead can deal with it. Oh, wait, they already have!
"and an attempt to bring about conditions to repeat the atrocity"
Might as well arrest everyone in the world, then. Someone *might* kill another person. Just like this *might* (not a chance) bring about another holocaust!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
So free speech is well and good, and should be protected...until you disagree with it? Somehow I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. Under your description, anyone who was offended by something said to them could claim it was 'harassment' and try to file charges. Do you really want the world to suck that bad?
It's generally expected that you will have to put up with a certain level of minor harassment on a day-to-day basis. On the internet, you should expect that level to rise by default. The anonymity of an internet message is quite appealing to people, and often results in them not self-censoring as much as they might in a real-world encounter. The fact that the police have the ability to actually act on it is frightening to say the least.
I'm very happy laws like this haven't quite made it into the US. This is the sort of threat we're facing with all of this 'Cyber Bullying' legislation they are trying to pass. Fight it. Vote it down. Do your duty to protect the constitution. It is the parents' responsibility to protect their children, not the government's.
If you're a grown-ass adult, you should have a tough enough skin that you don't need to have people ARRESTED for trolling you on the internet. If you can't manage, turn off the computer. Nobody's forcing you to surf Facebook or forums. You CHOSE to be there and read what people wrote.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
The offended parties voluntarily read his comments of their own free will, from a site which they do not own or administrate, which isn't even located in a country governed by the laws which you described.
The problem is that this sets a dangerous precedent. Pretty soon, you'll have to watch what you say on the internet for fear that it might offend someone and then the cops will come knocking. Everyone on 4chan will be screwed.
Just because the person offended was bereaved and the offense was directed at a deceased party does not mean there should be any sort of exceptional limit to what is legally acceptable. This is quickly spiraling into China-sized censorship.
Absolute rubbish.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
So free speech is well and good, and should be protected...until you disagree with it?
If you really think that's what's happened here, you need to think again.
This is the sort of threat we're facing with all of this 'Cyber Bullying' legislation they are trying to pass.
That people might be held accountable for their actions? Say it ain't so!
If you're a grown-ass adult, you should have a tough enough skin that you don't need to have people ARRESTED for trolling you on the internet.
I disagree. Where technical means are sufficient to prevent them from harassing you, you might have a point. There is functionally no difference from harassing someone online as compared to harassing them in person when they cannot avoid it. Society gains nothing by permitting this type of speech, and speech has always been regulated to some degree. If you have a message and you want to get it out, then get it out. This person admits to having engaged in this activity specifically to cause suffering and defending that is not only morally bankrupt but also stupid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You mean scale of how the Albanians, Bulgarians, Armenians, etc, don't all have relatives with controlling shares in major Western media outlets to make sure we never, ever get to stop hearing about it? After all, to quote Adolf Hitler, "Who now remembers Armenia?"
There is ethnic cleansing in Palestine which is far more ironic...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
And yet, if I go around saying that MacGyver2210 kept me locked in his basement for three years while he raped me every night, I expect you will try to have me silenced. In most places, I'd even be subject to fines and possibly imprisonment if I'm vocal enough in my speech. If I shout outside your bedroom window through a megaphone all night, I expect you'll try to have me silenced.
Your quote refers specifically to political speech, especially the right to criticize government, corporation, and personal behavior. A society demands limits on speech, or it degenerates into anarchy. Prohibitions against telling lies and inciting violence are among the most common limits.
Does that mean Gay persons can be arrested for "harassment" when they have their marches? Or maybe the Christians standing by with "god hates gay" signs in the periphery? Or maybe both?
This law seems ripe for abuse in order to suppress free speech.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It enables further promotion of bigotry against Jews, Homosexuals, and other groups. If you claim it didn't happen then you can much more easily glorify Hitler and the NAZI party...the funny thing is that this is done primarily (in the US at least) by people who really don't know much at all about Hitler or the NAZI's.
It also allows an argument that "evil Jews have completely character assassinated poor Hitler with this Holocaust nonsense and that's why they should be killed."
In my somewhat limited experience, it's a white man's version of "the man is keeping me down" which is used as a call to arms.
Correct. The term you are looking for is jus cogens. International law is usually laterally oriented with nobody above anyone else, even the UN, but war crimes, piracy, genocide, and torture are acts that every nation has an erga omnes obligation to follow. Being victorious allows you to defend your actions, but does not grant immunity due to sovereignty. Unfortunately, nobody ever actually holds anyone accountable for these things.
Ethnic cleansing shouldn't be confused with the methods used to achieve it, such as genocide. Ethnic cleansing is the removal of an ethnic group from a certain location by any targetted means, either legal, semi-legal or otherwise. Ethnic cleansing is fairly universally acknowledged as having taken past in Israel in the past:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus
Arguably the creeping borders of the security fencing and steady expansions of Jewish settlements represents a low-intensity ethnic cleansing to this day. How welcome do you think local Arab farmers would feel in buying a house in the new Jewish settlements?
I'm no expert, but it doesn't sound preposterous to call that ethnic cleansing.
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree with, taking an 'obviously impossible, absurd' stance, and the possibly more reasonable people on that same side don't distance themselves from their own fanatics. One of the things I saw during my own involvement in the abortion debate was that on the Pro-Choice side, there were a few women who claimed all sex with males was rape, so the 'except in cases of rape and incest' clause always applied anyway. Some of these wanted to do away with all men and use cloning to copy human females only. There's an odd feeling when somebody casually advocates the genocide of 3 billion people and the use of a technology we don't actually have as the solution to all the world's problems, and nobody else in the room is willing to call them crazy. On the Pro-Life side I saw people (mostly Roman Catholic priests), who saw banning abortion as only the first step in passing laws banning all extramarital sex, then banning masturbation and all pornography including the bra section of the Sears catalog, bringing back the laws that required showing all married couples in movies as sleeping in twin beds, the ones dictating skirt lengths, and on and on.
I suspect many organisations would actually be stronger if they tossed out some people who claim to be part of their coalitions, even if their overall numbers of members dropped. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to say "He doesn't speak for me, even if he claims to.".
The real key is, whether somebody is lying (as you suggest), or insane (as I suggest here), doesn't really matter, and nobody ought to be given a free pass to disrupt discourse because we can't tell if they are one or the other. I don't know if Glenn Beck is insane or mendacious, and the people who say he is crazy like a fox may be the rightist of all, but what he does sheds more heat than light, either way. I don't have to decide if he is nuts or faking it to realise he isn't contributing anything useful. That goes in spades for the holocaust denialists. A specific statement of theirs may seem insane, or a deliberate lie, or sometimes a reasonable statement, but examining a whole series of statements they make, sooner or later you realise they are not adding anything constructive to any of the processes of debate, discussion or education.
Who is John Cabal?
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree with, taking an 'obviously impossible, absurd' stance, and the possibly more reasonable people on that same side don't distance themselves from their own fanatics. One of the things I saw during my own involvement in the abortion debate was that on the Pro-Choice side, there were a few women who claimed all sex with males was rape, so the 'except in cases of rape and incest' clause always applied anyway. Some of these wanted to do away with all men and use cloning to copy human females only. There's an odd feeling when somebody casually advocates the genocide of 3 billion people and the use of a technology we don't actually have as the solution to all the world's problems, and nobody else in the room is willing to call them crazy. On the Pro-Life side I saw people (mostly Roman Catholic priests), who saw banning abortion as only the first step in passing laws banning all extramarital sex, then banning masturbation and all pornography including the bra section of the Sears catalog, bringing back the laws that required showing all married couples in movies as sleeping in twin beds, the ones dictating skirt lengths, and on and on.
I suspect many organisations would actually be stronger if they tossed out some people who claim to be part of their coalitions, even if their overall numbers of members dropped. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to say "He doesn't speak for me, even if he claims to.".
The real key is, whether somebody is lying (as you suggest), or insane (as I suggest here), doesn't really matter, and nobody ought to be given a free pass to disrupt discourse because we can't tell if they are one or the other. I don't know if Glenn Beck is insane or mendacious, and the people who say he is crazy like a fox may be the rightist of all, but what he does sheds more heat than light, either way. I don't have to decide if he is nuts or faking it to realise he isn't contributing anything useful. That goes in spades for the holocaust denialists. A specific statement of theirs may seem insane, or a deliberate lie, or sometimes a reasonable statement, but examining a whole series of statements they make, sooner or later you realise they are not adding anything constructive to any of the processes of debate, discussion or education.
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
We have come to a point where all the test cases for free speech are people being unambiguous assholes, rather than people simply stating unpopular political opinions. As a result, we are put in a situation where we have to choose between an absolute commitment to free speech and a society where people can mourn their dead in peace. The latter will win, ultimately, even if it means using the Constitution as toilet paper (hopefully, it won't come to that.) And I think, ultimately, I would rather that the latter won. I don't value free speech for its own sake: I value it as a means of checking power, of keeping discourse lively and intellects rigorous, of keeping us from getting complacent, dumb, or too obedient.
Why is it that the Westboro Baptist Church gets away with picketing real-life funerals again and again, while this schmuck gets four months for internet douchebaggery? By "picketing", I mean standing there with giant signs that say things like "god hates fags" at the funeral of a dead soldier: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20060121/NEWS/601210405?p=3&tc=pg
The way I see it, free speech comes at a cost: you have to put up with other people saying things that are stupid, offensive, and downright wrong. If you want a right to free speech, you can't have a right not to be offended. Mr. Coss' behavior was certainly wrong, but nobody should serve jail time for posting to a Facebook page.
So free speech is well and good, and should be protected...until you disagree with it? Somehow I don't think that's how it's supposed to work. Under your description, anyone who was offended by something said to them could claim it was 'harassment' and try to file charges. Do you really want the world to suck that bad?
Make it so that no matter how intrusive, offensive, repetitive cases of harassment you can not make them stop? Sorry, there's more than two colors in my world.
It's generally expected that you will have to put up with a certain level of minor harassment on a day-to-day basis. On the internet, you should expect that level to rise by default. The anonymity of an internet message is quite appealing to people, and often results in them not self-censoring as much as they might in a real-world encounter.
What great logic, this is the same kind of logic those that say "if you dress slutty it's your fault you got raped" use.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings