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UK Man Jailed For 'Offensive Tweets'
Motor writes "A UK judge has jailed a man for 56 days after he posted offensive comments on twitter about a footballer who had a heart attack during a game. He's also been thrown out of his university degree course weeks from graduating. His comments may have been offensive... but do they really justify a prison sentence and ruining his life?"
If you live in the US...
While it is likely that the GP was from the USA, the fact that the USA has idiotic laws doesn't have any bearing on the fact that the UK has idiotic laws.
If you think the law isn't idiotic, then argue about its merits. Being worse elsewhere doesn't make a bad law good, because no matter how bad it gets in the UK, it will ALWAYS be worse somewhere else.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Different countries have different standards. Yes, you can be imprisoned for being a racist in the UK, but in the US, well, you can pretty much kill someone because they're black and it's OK as long as you thought they were up to no good at the time.
It's just a cultural difference.
A couple of drunk twitter posts and you get jail time?
That's maybe... taking things a little too seriously
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
What jury? He was up before the local magistrates.
What's troubling is that magistrate said that his sentence had to "reflect public abhorrence". So he decided to play to the gallery and jail him instead of considering the case on its merits.
It's one piece of Blairite legislation that should be repealed as soon as possible. How long before it's extended to religious or political opinions?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
That means you don't take freedom of speech seriously.
But freedom of speech has always had limitations.
The classic of example of limits on freedom of speech being you do not have the freedom to yell "FIRE" in a crowded cinema just to laugh and watch as everyone panics and tramples over each other to escape.
Now should inciting racial hatred be in the same class of action as one likely to cause injury or death to others? In most situations I would hope that sane rational people would be annoyed by such incitement but not take it further. If however you have a situation where you say it's okay to pick on people - particularly people deemed vulnerable by society - then at some point you have to draw the line and say it's not okay. As a society/judicial system the UK has decided that it will put its foot down about these things because it wants to take a stand that racial abuse in all its forms is wrong. I don't see the problem with this.
So let's argue that 56 days in jail is a bit extreme, let's perhaps argue that it wasn't that offensive to the person concerned (although I would argue I don't know what he could have said that was more offensive) but can we agree that there are some things that in some circumstances it is just wrong to say.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Please explain the internment of UK Palestinians during the Gulf War.
We are a democracy in the UK. If the people don't like the law banning "incitement to racial hatred", we get rid of it.
The freedom of speech argument is bogus. I'm fairly sure that the US has laws against slander, libel, shouting "fire!" in a crowded subway when there is none, advertising medicine as cure for cancer when there is no evidence, etc etc.
I am not an English lawyer but wife is. She pointed out to me that England has a long history of civil peace (our last revolution was in the 1640s), a legal system that has been copied by many countries throughout the world and is the first choice for foreign companies and Russian oligarchs to have their cases heard. English law must be doing something right.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
Yes, it does. That's precisely what it means: that the government won't punish you for expressing an opinion. If it meant anything less than that, it'd be "freedom of speech as long as it's approved, otherwise you're going to prison" which even the most ruthless tyrants would be perfectly OK with. I mean, Vlad the Impaler would let you say anything you wanted that didn't bother him (and then impale you if you crossed the line).
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that society won't judge you for your words. It damn well means that the government shouldn't.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Yeah, law enforcement action over twitter posts is insane.
"you have to admire their swift justice in dealing with this situation."
But I don't have to admire their swift injustice in dealing with it.
Doing something stupid faster doesn't make it any less stupid.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
FFS, every time someone is punished for expressing a (racist, sexist, etc) opinion [...]
...the Constitution is shredded (assuming that the "someone" is subject to American law). I am perfectly free to say that I hate black people. You can say that women are stupid. The Westboro gang can say that God wants gays to burn in hell. Every single one of those are perfectly legal, protected, expressions of opinion that the government will not prosecute you for. That is what "freedom of speech" means.
It gets much more complicated when those opinions are accompanied by calls for violence. If I were to carry a sign saying "kill a black person today", I should expect to find myself explaining my thought process to a judge. I am perfectly within my rights to express happiness at another person's misfortunes, though.
To be clear, I'm speaking of legal rights, not societal tolerance. People saying things so utterly incompatible with a civil society should be corrected or shunned by the people around them. Sometimes, that may involve consequences as severe a company firing an employee who says things that reflect poorly on the company. That is entirely different from the government stepping in and prosecuting such speech, though.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
We are a democracy in the UK. If the people don't like the law banning "incitement to racial hatred", we get rid of it.
There is no real democracy without freedom of speech. When you aren't allowed to discuss your point of view, how are you going to discuss politics? How are you going to get your standpoint implemented when you aren't allowed to talk about them in a campaign?
We can't. We're afraid to say anything...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I mean, if you kill someone...they are dead. Does it matter really the reason you did it? I think not...the person is no more dead for being black/white/hispanic/chinese/gay that they would be if someone just got mad at them for banging their significant other while the killer was at work.
The crime is murder....not the thought behind it, or at least it shouldn't be. Motive? Sure, but that explains the murder it shouldn't give a certain race or sexual orientation 'special' status which makes it a worse crime and extended punishment.
Is it worse for a guy to kill a black guy because he's black....than for him to kill a white guy for any other reason in the world? If you think so....explain why please....both guys are equally as dead.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yes, evidently you can. The US affords much broader protection for nearly all forms of speech then the UK, or nearly any other country.
But lets not start sucking each other's dicks just yet. For every thing the US gets right, it gets two things wrong.
Not to mention that the free speech rights most US citizens take for granted are under constant assault. They are tested in the courts constantly. When you read about something like this happening overseas you shouldn't think, "what a bunch of backwards idiots", you should think, "I better watch out or that sort of thing could start happening here too".
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
It's posts like this I wish I could be alerted to each post submitted with: UID < 10000 :)
You don't want that. I'm a dumbass most of the time.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
A real crime needs both an aggressor (the initiator of coercion) and a victim (the recipient of coercion). The real crime should be perfectly clear by now. The victim is the insensitive asshole, and the aggressor is government.
Post-WW2, we live in modern regulatory states. These penalize, and sometimes criminalize, regulatory infractions. Deliberate failure to pay taxes, for example, or deliberately structuring your transactions to avoid anti-money-laundering techniques, or driving a vehicle without a license.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I have to disagree. Punishment should be only for the crime. A person tortured, and/or killed....will result just as brutallly tortured and/or dead no matter why that person was targeted.
The message sent by a crime like this is "If you dare to be gay here, we just might kill you." It's terrorism, in any reasonable sense of the word. The crime targets not just the person who is violently attacked, but anyone who shares that characteristic with the victim.
If a straight guy was in place of the gay guy you mentioned in your example...he would be just as tortured and then dead as the gay guy
No, if a straight guy was in place of the gay guy, he wouldn't have been tortured or dead, because the attackers WENT LOOKING FOR A GAY GUY TO TORTURE AND KILL. That's the whole fucking point.