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In UK, Twitter, Facebook Rants Land Some In Jail
concealment writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press story, as carried by the Houston Chronicle:"In Britain, hundreds of people are prosecuted each year for posts, tweets, texts and emails deemed menacing, indecent, offensive or obscene, and the number is growing as our online lives expand. 'Fifty years ago someone would have made a really offensive comment in a public space and it would have been heard by relatively few people,' said Mike Harris of free-speech group Index on Censorship. People take it upon themselves to report this offensive material to police, and suddenly you've got the criminalization of offensive speech. Figures obtained by The Associated Press through a freedom of information request show a steadily rising tally of prosecutions in Britain for electronic communications — phone calls, emails and social media posts — that are grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character — from 1,263 in 2009 to 1,843 in 2011. Justice Igor Judge said in his judgment that the law should not prevent 'satirical or iconoclastic or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humor, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it.'"
God says...
1:3 And David said unto him, From whence comest thou? And he said unto
him, Out of the camp of Israel am I escaped.
1:4 And David said unto him, How went the matter? I pray thee, tell
me.
And he answered, That the people are fled from the battle, and many of
the people also are fallen and dead; and Saul and Jonathan his son are
dead also.
1:5 And David said unto the young man that told him, How knowest thou
that Saul and Jonathan his son be dead? 1:6 And the young man that
told him said, As I happened by chance upon mount Gilboa, behold, Saul
leaned upon his spear; and, lo, the chariots and horsemen followed
hard after him.
... because if they aren't they get locked up....
Should have landed me in jail a couple of times, at least.
Bad-toothed limey motherfuckers.
-- Ethanol-fueled
Turns out it was a slippery slope after all!
who knew, eh?
(apart from everyone who pointed it out)
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That guy really picked the right career.
-AnonoPosty McCoward
Big Brother is watching...
They can keep their warm beer, rotting teeth, bad food and dictatorship.
I find humor in all this, despite its infringement on freedom of speech. I find satisfaction in the idea of rude people being prosecuted.
"Hundreds?" try 10 and most were thrown out of court lol
Most if not all were being deliberately obnoxious rather than just voicing a genuine opinion.
shit-filled, accounts for less O^S. Now BSDI is mo5t. Look at the
If they're going to round up people, I wish they'd round up youtube commenters. Those idiots need some help and re-education.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This has to be her fault...
And the young man that
told him said, As I happened by chance upon mount Gilboa, behold, Saul
leaned upon his spear; and, lo, the chariots and horsemen followed
hard after him.
So Saul leaned on his "spear" *snicker* and the the horsemen followed "hard" after him - WTF is this?!? Some homosexual orgy story in the Bible?!?
Its 2 faced and all about pacifying the mob, the UK is starting to get very mob like, witch hunts for pedos, people stoning MPs, people in the UK are very unhappy lately but we are not allowed to come out and say it in case we offend someone and have to spend a night in jail.
A direct Example of the 2 facedness of the system here: check out Franky Boyles Twitter, the stuff that comes out on there is generally very offensive (I love you Boyle!! regardless of what i say here), yet he is not in jail. Yet we see the poppy burner, the guy that said mean things about someones dead dad, and a few others all in get arrested. The mob wants them to pay, and the police then back up the mob, such a bad precedent but too late now.
Another reason for the police jumping on this is that they are trying to look like they are not just there to collect speeding tickets and rounding up pot dealers so they have deciced to start a new war on socail media, hell the war on drugs was a good spinner maybe this is will be equally good. I dont want to sound completely negative, but where i live the police are not that well liked, in context it took 8 police offices to remove a man from a swimming pool for swearing at some teenage kids that were splashing him,
In closing my understand with UK law is that if you piss off someone powerfull enough the way the UK law is structured means they will always have something on you. I think thats the goal of the system to make sure they have something on everyone and then keep everyone in their places and no one gets above their station.
iMe
He's being mean to me!
*sigh*
If offensive speech and behaviour got everyone into trouble, then Anjem Choudhury and his mob would all be in jail.
Strangely enough, this hasn't happened... In Britain, you can only be racist, bigoted or offensive if you're white. Brown people get a free pass.
And I mean it from my heart. And no, I don't wan to fuck you personally. Maybe the Old Fuck Of Hannover And Pimpelsberg-Rattenhofen can do it.
Polite civil party line speakers disgust me!
Please arrest them, they are so offensive to me, they are causing me to revolt. I blame them for all my problems and the problems in the government.
Only Klingons should be allowed to use the internet.
Q'pla.
Just leave people to continue making threatening and abusive phone calls, emails and posts on social media?
I wonder if timothy would be happy for me to phone his house at all hours of the day and night and threaten to murder him? Probably not, I imagine.
Two of the examples given were blatant miscarriages of the legal system and we should all be concerned about them. However the vast majority of these messages are not be protected under free speech. If someone sends death threats, racially abuses someone etc then I am entirely happy for them to be prosecuted. Calm down a bit and have some perspective.
I was under the impression that this was the reason for the internet. Making offensive opinions and disturbed comments.
I feel deeply offended by the fucking bloody cunts who invented these telecommunication laws!
People actually name their kids "Igor"?
Technoli
Am I the only one who thinks this is funny?
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Everywhere in the world you can get investigated, charged and arrested for saying something stupid. The Brits don't have a monopoly on that.
In the UK you can get arrested for all kinds of things you say: Calling a police horse gay, for example. If someone feels like something you say could insult someone, you get arrested. Now, not all of these (ludicrous) charges are successful, but still I think there already is a bad chilling effect.
Listen to Rowan Atkinson's (Mr. Bean) excellent 10 Minutes speech on the topic and why he is part of the campaign "Feel free to insult me".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2012/nov/13/remembrance-day-burning-poppy-cartoon
"I'd give you my honest opinion but that'd be illegal."
I'm sure if we sample the most crime-ridden portions of each of our countries we'll find lots of people with bad teeth.
Living in a nice middle class neighborhood, all the kids have braces or straight teeth and an adult with yellowed teeth is called a "smoker."
As for American Beer, try our microbrews, not the Pepsi-subtitutes from BevCo. As for complicated recipes for turning cheap ingredients into tasty ones? Try a prize winning Peach Pie in Georgia. For good food in the Pacific NorthDamp, we eat fresh fish and good steak we import from the Mid-West. Applying the "not invented here" standard to your food will make for a pretty lousy diet in any country.
It's not paradise, but tooth decay and crappy food are conscious choices here, not the only options.
Saying something stupid is not a crime. The simple fact that you are not telling the truth does not constitute a crime, nor does your ignorance in making false statements.
What you were probably referring to is saying something offensive or insulting. I think you're right insofar as free speech is indeed under attack in a lot of countries, but that should be all the more reason to defend it. It has been proven numerous times that in practice it is impossible to outlaw insulting statements without harming free speech.
For example, in the UK, a teenager was arrested for calling the "Church" of Scientology a cult. You can't tell me that this is not a ludicrous undermining of free speech laws.
...Twitter unfollows you.
The incident to which the AC is referring is about a poppy burning which was in the news just a few days ago. A man was arrested for burning the poppy on Remembrance day.
This is probably similar to the flag burning controversy in the US. (See also the excellent Futurama episode on why it makes not sense to defend freedom of expression by abolishing it)
Now I'm gonna tell ya a story, a tale of wrong and right; and freedom is the reason you can't take it without a fight.
So now I'm startin' up a posse (suck my dick, suck my dick) to come and look for you; we're gonna put a stop to what you want to do.
You fucking whores (you fuckin' whores), that's all you are!
You say our records are offensive (you're a douche, you're a douche), our messages ain't right, you say "We're gonna label records so our kids can grow up right".
You fucking whores (let them decide), that's all you are!
"Shit, fuck, Satan, death, sex, drugs, rape", these seven words you're trying to take.
"Shit, fuck, Satan, death, sex, drugs, rape", right or wrong it's our choice to make.
America the beautiful, land of the free - Don't change the words to land of hypocrisy!
Now I'm startin' up a posse (fascist scum, fascist scum) and we'll damn sure make you see, something that offends you may not be offensive to me.
You fucking whores (you fuckin' whores) That's all you are!
Now you might take offense to a word like "fuck" or "shit" (dick!); but you fuckin' don't have the right (cunt!) to discriminate me for saying it!
You fuckin' whores (you fuckin' whores), that's all you are!
So now I'm startin' up a posse (motherfucker, motherfucker) to fight for freedom of choice, to fight for freedom of speech, we're gonna make you hear our voice.
And now I don't do this to shock you (that's the end, that's the end), I don't do this for spite; you've got the choice, don't buy it, don't read it, and don't say your opinion's right
You fucking whores (you fuckin' whores), that's all you are (cunty, cunty, cunty, cunt)!
You know you can't censor my feelings, you can't censor my thoughts. Censorship's against everything America stands for.
You fuckin' whores (let us decide), that's all you are (and this ain't sexist, either)!
It is basic human nature to try and stop people from doing whatever it is that they don't like.
The notion that we should respect the freedom of others, as noble as it is, goes against the path-of-least-resistance of human cognition.
So, even in countries that value freedom, you have large groups of the populace that strive to take it away from each other.
Eternal vigilance, and all that.
It seems to me this is the underlying problem.
We can demand absolute free speech on the internet, but it won't help if people are very unhappy. It's doubly not going to help if there's a mob which waits for someone to be offensive, and then pounces on them.
Maybe free speech only happens in happy societies. They don't mind the complaining. Unhappy societies are unstable and punish it.
Looks like the solution is to make society more happy.
That's because white liberals hate the idea of a majority.
They want us to be pluralistic, so there are no standards.
That way, anything goes.
The raging Ego is made happiness by (a) the absence of standards and (b) guaranteed reward.
If anything is going to utterly destroy the Internet, it's going to be censorship, because once you open the door to censoring one type of speech, you start an avalanche of censoring all types of speech. It's like bigotry and racism: Once you cross that line and devalue one group of class of people, you can devalue any group or class of people. Before too long the only way to avoid eventual prosecution would be to stay off the Internet completely.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
According to Wikipedia
"However there is a broad sweep of exceptions including threatening, abusive, or insulting speech or behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace (which has been used to prohibit racist speech targeted at individuals),[63][64] incitement,[65] incitement to racial hatred,[66] incitement to religious hatred, incitement to terrorism including encouragement of terrorism and dissemination of terrorist publications,[65][67] glorifying terrorism,[68][69] collection or possession of information likely to be of use to a terrorist,[70][71] treason including imagining the death of the monarch,[72] sedition,[72] obscenity, indecency including corruption of public morals and outraging public decency,[73] defamation,[74] prior restraint, restrictions on court reporting including names of victims and evidence and prejudicing or interfering with court proceedings,[75][76] prohibition of post-trial interviews with jurors,[76] scandalising the court by criticising or murmuring judges,[76][77] time, manner, and place restrictions,[78] harassment, privileged communications, trade secrets, classified material, copyright, patents, military conduct, and limitations on commercial speech such as advertising."
Compare to US.
"There are several common law exceptions including obscenity,[88][89] defamation,[88][89] incitement,[89] incitement to riot or imminent lawless action,[88][89] fighting words,[88] fraud, speech covered by government granted monopoly (copyright), and speech integral to criminal conduct. There are federal criminal law statutory prohibitions covering all the common law exceptions other than defamation, of which there is civil law liability, as well as making false statements (lying) in "matters within the jurisdiction" of the federal government,[90] speech related to information decreed to be related to national security such as military and classified information,[91] false advertising,[89] perjury,[89] privileged communications, trade secrets,[92][93] copyright, and patents. Most states and localities have many identical restrictions, as well as harassment, and time, place and manner restrictions."
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Majorities never defend themselves because they have many concerns, where for smaller groups the quest is much simpler: get power and get influence.
They can keep their warm beer, rotting teeth, bad food and dictatorship.
Rookie, I take it you've never been there, and this is coming from an American errr Obamacan I wouldn't mock the Brits to much, there same Fords, Chevy's, get twice the amount of gas mileage that we get cell phone plans lol, don't even go there the monthly plans we pay for tv,,internet is a freaking joke compared to the tv license you pay once a year and that is cheaper than what I pay per month to watch hundred's of channels of paid advertisement and commercials (adverts) every 4-5 minutes I would say that America is much much more of a dictatorship than the UK I am a born & raised American, and also own a house in the UK Greed, Corruption, Monopoly's, ruined this once great Nation Don't knock a place just because you have never been there
Then kill her.
Funny how the people that tend to do the reporting also tend to do and say things just as bad, if not worse, than they report. I'm all for lining them up and smacking some sense into them. Wait is that menacing?
I've been on the receiving end of that when I worked in retail. I was reported to my boss by an elderly lady, and she actually called the cops, because of a comment she says she overheard me telling another employee as she is cussing me out and threatening me in all kinds of hilariously awkward ways and the minute the cop arrives she is the grandma next door all the kids in the neighborhood love as their own grandma. Of course nothing came of it as I don't even know what in the hell she was talking about.
When it comes to non-violent protests and speaking your mind, I'm all for it. Talk is just talk and if someone wants to burn a flag or a book, so freaking what? Have at it. The slope gets slippery as you near the point between free speech and illegal or violent actions but we shouldn't be moving it further into free speech territory thus removing rights and freedoms, making mere words or personal actions illegal when they cause no real harm to another except offending your holier than thou morality.
'Fifty years ago someone would have made a really offensive comment in a public space and it would have been heard by relatively few people,' said Mike Harris of free-speech group Index on Censorship
Fifty years ago would be 1962.
Radio and television broadcasters have been operating on a national and international scale since the 1920s. Newspapers and magazines since the invention of the telegraph.
Each had to come to terms with legal and ethical restraints on what could be published in an age of instant mass communication.
...welcome our new Twitter-cop overlords.
This has NOT hit UK mainstream media. Over here they're more concerned about who's first to get kicked out of the studio camp in I'm A Celebrity...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
The current government there mocks the sacrifice of the good men
who died to stop the supposedly evil Nazis in WWII. Were the Nazis
really evil ? There would be no middle eastern hassle if the Nazis had won,
think about THAT.
What is now apparent is that the UK just wanted to ensure that it alone would
be able to perpetrate evil, and that the Germans would not be able to get in on
the action.
It'd be interesting to see what the majority of the tweets were that caused offense. I know post-election Twitter was blown up with ignorant people threatening to or saying they were planning to assassinate Obama. There's even a blog made just for calling attention to these people.
Free speech can be important but thats a direct threat against an individual.
Nope, we just invented manners, it's very different.
For those who don't know, here's the actual situation in the UK:
The courts generally consider internet posts in the same way they do traditional journalism, you can say what you want as long as it isn't libelous, incitement to commit a crime, or "grossly offensive". Bloggers and Tweeters etc are generally given more leeway and lower fines/sentences than traditional journalists on the grounds that, while ignorance is no excuse, "proper" journalists should very certainly know better. There is no written constitution as such in the UK, and therefore no official right to free speech, but it is generally accepted that the really important free speech, such as speaking out against the government, is protected, and European legislation does provide some protection which UK law omits entirely.
The big problem is the highly subjective "grossly offensive" element mentioned above. The interpretation of this is very much down to the opinion of the judge and/or jury overseeing the case. In my opinion they've been overly touchy about this - after all, you can shout at somebody in a pub that you are going to kill them and chances are the worst you'll see is the inside of a cell for 12hrs and a drunk and disorderly charge.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Justice Igor Judge said in his judgment that the law should not prevent 'satirical or iconoclastic or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humor, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it.'"
Immediately afterwards, Frankenstein said "Fire bad!".
Now, If this had happened in the story, the mob would have laughed and recognized their good nature. It could've been a happy ending.
But, no! Igor, being an oppressed servant of Dr. Frankenstein, just muttered "Yesss, master.", and left it at that. Do you see the cost of oppression, now?
discussing with a friend from england one day we talked about differences similar to this one. And at one point he said something along the lines of "and that is precisely the difference. You are an American citizen, I am a British -subject-."
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Political Correctness coming back to bite you
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Attention seekers annoyed when attention given! Some are so polite about posting inaccurate information on twitter they cannot see why they would be sued whereas a newspaper did not reveal CTB's name after he took out an injunction to prevent anyone revealing that the only player to have played in the Premiership since it was formed was banging his sister-in-law and he did not want his other mistress finding out whereas a nobody Welsh guy went to jail for 8 weeks for questioning the over reaction to a player getting a heart attack on a football pitch.
What surprises me is that people have not cottoned on to the need to post anonymously. The person who broke many super-injunctions on Twitter managed to do it, probably via Tor but maybe even via a proxy or open wifi.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Freedom of speech was meant to protect the right to say Political things, not insulting a murdered child.
... by those funny curly white wigs they wear.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
They need to define this in the laws and stop letting people that wear funny wigs decide.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
We're talking about the UK, not Ireland. At that he'd have to be somewhat old (born before 1949) to be one of the very few British subjects left.
More likely he was just too stupid to know that he was a British citizen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_subject#After_1983
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Fuck all of you and your inbred leaders with dreams of fascism dancing in your heads.
The fucking jury, that's who the fuck get to decide if they who gets to give a fuck and who gets fucked.
...Everyone would be clamoring about free speech, freedom, etc.
In reality, there is no consistent standard of free speech that will be agreed upon by everyone. Saying something in support of the Nazi party is different, saying something about the Queen is different, even releasing pictures of someone related to the Queen is different.
But no clamor of free speech when it comes to Western countries. We're civilized, after all, right?
I say let them be offended.
Problem is that you rant in a pub and only the people in the room hear you: on the internet things are "forever and for all", and searchable...
He was a man who didn't know the meaning of the word "fear"; or the meaning of many other words longer than 3 letters
Freedom of speech is part of UK law. UK law incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10 of which coveres freedom of expression. The convention lists various factors which can limit the right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights#Article_10_-_expression
A recent case covered a number of people who tweeted the name of a rape victim even though her name was protected by the court.