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.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
The trial shows that our judiciary are a bit out of touch. And that our institutional sense of political correctness has gone a bit too far.
But expressing solidarity through protest, by repeating the same "crime" - admittedly with a very minor risk of prosecution? That nobility. That's the British spirit. There's a reason that the colloquial phrase for contravention of fair play is "not cricket". It isn't "not baseball", is it?
I view the whole sorry affair as the result of over-exposure to American culture, a culture of flying off the handle, an overinflated sense of entitlement, and above all, an almost complete lack of understanding of the concept of irony. We've lost our ability to cope with the ambiguity and the grey areas in life, instead taking the simpletons viewpoint that right and wrong are black and white, that there is a sharply defined line you must not cross. Deary me. Life is complicated. For those of us who can't cope without a truly rigid set of rules, might I suggest that you go back to kindergarten.
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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.
Not only that, but the campaign potentially puts law enforcement in a quandary. They can either arrest, charge and convict hundreds of people (including several popular celebrities) for posting a line of trivial text that harms precisely nobody, or have Paul Chambers' lawyers demand that they explain why they are applying the law selectively and unfairly.
That's one of the biggest problems with taking speech crime this far: it becomes utterly trivial for an angry population to effectively DDOS the enforcement of it.
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.
That's a very British attitude. You may insult me all you like, but I shall take offence if you do so with with poor grammar.
(Apologies if you're not British - however your attitude certainly is )
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.