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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.
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It's one piece of Blairite legislation that should be repealed as soon as possible.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
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 can't. We're afraid to say anything...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
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.
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.