Slashdot Mirror
UK Twitter Users Declare 'I'm Spartacus'
An anonymous reader writes "Tweeters have joined forces to support Paul Chambers, the man convicted and fined for a Twitter message threatening to blow up an airport. A so-called 'I'm Spartacus' campaign encouraging users to 're-tweet' his words has also become a huge hit. The hashtag #IAmSpartacus is currently the number one trending topic on Twitter in the UK, with #twitterjoketrial in second place. Chambers is believed to be the first person convicted in the UK for posting an offensive tweet. After the hearing, actor and Twitter fan Stephen Fry tweeted that he would pay Chambers' fine. Comedian Dara O'Briain tweeted that the verdict was 'ludicrous' while Peep Show actor David Mitchell said it was 'punishment for flippancy.'"
I suspect not as many people will re-tweet on behalf of Garreth Compton.
It is more effective. The judge's ruling was based on the idea that an "ordinary person" would not recognize the joke, take it seriously, and be terrified. The point of this campaign is to demonstrate that that's nonsense.
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Those same idiots will scream even louder when someone really does blow up something and the cops ignored it because of these protests.
That's not the issue. The complaint is not that the police investigated the tweet; this might well be argued to fall under due diligence. The complaint is that they investigated it, discovered it to be totally harmless, and still brought the full force of the law to bear on the tweeter simply for the hell of it.
He didn't send this to the world. He sent this to his Twitter followers, who are not stupid enough to think that a hyperbolic joke is actually a real threat . It just happened to be visible to other people if they took the time to look for it. Maybe if you read the details you might realise that the airport saw it, and deemed it not a threat. The police investigated and recognised that this was not a threat. The CPS and the Judges, however, threw the book at him and prosecuted under an antique law that should not even apply.
This tweet was clearly not a real threat, and anyone with half a brain can recognise that, apart from judges. And you.
A latent existence
I know the GP started it, but this isn't the time for nationalism - things are going to shit on both sides of the Atlantic, and trying to argue that one side is doing better or worse is not productive; they're bad in different ways.
To paraphrase your post "People in the UK look at stuff that goes on in the US... teens being charged as sex offenders for taking pictures of themselves, or strip searched at school for carrying a headache pill...".
In my experience, Britain is more susceptible to allowing 'big brother' style intrusions from the government, while the US is more likely to get caught up in moral panics. Not to say that either country is immune to either problem, of course.
America looks at some of Britain's free speech violations and shakes their head at how the likes of this could never happen with the constitution for protection, while Britain looks back at America and wonders how much more power the fire-and-brimstone Christian minority can seize.