Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
I'm surprised that, being a judge, he hadn't already graduated. Seems a bit political by the university anyway.
Not just this story but other stories about censorship of the internet & television channels, indicate to me that free speech is no longer a right in the UK. That's a shame because that's where the right was first re-born in the modern world.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Interestingly, Association football is named after the fact that it was originally played by peasants, on foot. (The comparison was to polo, which was played by rich people on horseback.)
As for the importance of our respective footballs, is the championship game of your football season essentially a national holiday?
Liam Stacey was not arrested for offensive comments. He was found guilty of inciting racial hatred.
He wasn't thrown out of university; he is suspended pending an investigation.
The reality of freedom of speech (at least the US concept) is that it is not consequence free speech. While the article does not mention any actual harm committed through racial insensitivity, I can only assume that someone was threatened and that the threat was taken seriously through Liam's postings. If no actual harm was committed, society does not benefit by having someone go to prison.
I made a similar submission this morning regarding this issue.
This guy is being prosecuting for making critical remarks about British soldiers.
These guys were sent to prison for encouraging rioting on Facebook.
The BBC has more information here.
Everyone believes that Democracy won the cold war over Communism, but given what's happening in the west today, how true is that?
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.
He was found guilty of inciting racial hatred by a jury of his peers.
And yes, we take that pretty seriously over here.
But, apparently, not freedom of speech.
Oh granted, the guy is clearly an asshole (even if he was drunk when he posted them). But I really don't think you should be imprisoned just for being a racist. He should get kicked out of school, sure, because the school doesn't want to be affiliated with someone who does that shit. But a criminal sentence for saying something? You do realize that it isn't a very big step between that, and a criminal sentence for saying anything a majority of people don't like, right? Can't have a democratic government without freedom of speech, and that includes the right to say hateful things, for good or for ill.
I realize the UK doesn't have laws protecting what he did. I'm saying maybe it should, because not having them is worse than this guy not going to jail, in the long run.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
You're idiots. I have refused to travel to the UK since RIPA. I'll never travel there again.
And now you've called us idiots you could face prison if you do come.
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.
Cite a case where a person was jailed for 2+ years with the only 'evidence' is the cop's memory of what he smelled...
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
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
And let's put this into the proper perspective. This man insuted another man. He did NOT initiate actual coercion (theft, fraud, physical force) or threat thereof. He simply insulted another man.
Government, on the other hand, has clearly initiated coercion (actual physical force) against this man, the insensitive asshole.
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.
The laws of human nature trump the laws of government by definition.
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...
As a UK citizen, I have to question the sanity of this judgement. The gentleman in question is suspended from Swansea University at present (and, of course, unable to attend as he is in jail). He has admitted being very drunk when he tweeted. He has admitted initially claiming that his twitter account had been hacked after realising what he had done.
It is hardly a good use of a prison place, or cost effective, or a deterrent to put a drunk student who has done something stupid in jail. If we did that to every drunk stupid student just in Swansea, we'd have jails overflowing even more than they are now, every night of the week.
A long period of Community service and a requirement to do a meaningful race relations awareness course and, perhaps, a ban from social networks and alcohol would have been more than sufficient. Jail? It serves no useful purpose in this case and is ridiculous, and I say that as someone who is usually for longer prison sentences for proper (meaning violent) offenders.
It now transpires that in fact, what I've just written, if it is considered to criticise the judiciary, may well be breaking the UK Law: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17522730 Now I hate Peter Hain as much as the next man, but that's law's more of an ass than he is.
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.