In UK, Internet Trolls Could Face Two Years In Jail

An anonymous reader writes with this news from The Guardian about a proposed change in UK law that would greatly increase the penalties for online incivility: Internet trolls who spread "venom" on social media could be jailed for up to two years, the justice secretary Chris Grayling has said as he announced plans to quadruple the maximum prison sentence. Grayling, who spoke of a "baying cybermob", said the changes will allow magistrates to pass on the most serious cases to crown courts. The changes, which will be introduced as amendments to the criminal justice and courts bill, will mean the maximum custodial sentence of six months will be increased to 24 months. Grayling told the Mail on Sunday: "These internet trolls are cowards who are poisoning our national life. No one would permit such venom in person, so there should be no place for it on social media. That is why we are determined to quadruple the six-month sentence.

Comments

So what qualifies?

[alvinrod]

Who gets to decide what qualifies as trolling?

I have a feeling that there are some people who would take a polite "You're wrong and I disagree with you for the following reasons . . ." as trolling. Sure the "I hope you die in a car fire" and "I'm going to kill your animals" are low-hanging fruit, but there's a line there somewhere and it's not always easy to find. I'm not very comfortable with laws that require some form of human interpretation as guilt comes down entirely to the human doing the interpreting and at that point you have to hope they don't have an ax to grind or some other reason for disliking you.

Re:So what qualifies?

[ihtoit]

Except that's not the reality of the situation at all.

Judges are paid by the Local Authorities whose local jurisdiction they operate under. That's done through Legal Aid, which is controlled by the Local Authorities.
Jurisdictions are defined by the areas served by the Local Authorities and the police who directly answer to them. Council Tax pays police salaries. It's right there on the itemised bill.

Ergo, the police are beholden to local authorities: they REFUSE to investigate criminal allegations against any member of a local authority staff. They REFUSE to arrest corrupt judges. The Crown Prosecution Service have on record a grand total of ZERO prosecutions ever or pending against serving judges. Judges REFUSE to jail police officers who demonstrably perjure themselves. I have ample anecdotal evidence of this (currently withheld from publication pending private criminal prosecutions against named judges), there is also plenty of evidence in the remarkable absence of stories in the mainstream media of serving police officers being jailed for criminal activity and a grand total of ZERO serving police officers EVER having been convicted and jailed for causing a wrongful death (even though there are several videos of police officers actually committing acts which directly resulted in death). They all piss in the same pot.

Trolls are the lowest form of life. . .

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

. . . especially the ones behind using the internet to interfere with people's real lives, but I do not believe that mere trolling is criminal.

The EU, especially the UK's constant rolling back of the freedom of expression is downright concerning. If people go to prison for expressing an unpopular opinion I disagree with, how long before people go to prison for expressing an unpopular opinion I agree with?

Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.

Re: Trolls are the lowest form of life. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with expressing opinions or being rude, they are not covered under this law no matter how much offence a person takes. A person can only be prosecuted under this law if they are intentionally targeting a specific person in order to harass/stalk them.

I'm okay with that. The wording is clear enough that misuse of this law will be thrown out easily.

Re:Trolls are the lowest form of life. . .

[TubeSteak]

Despite it's flaws, the near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech by the US Supreme Court is a godsend and makes me proud to be an American.

I can't help but think that anyone who believes this is anything less that wildly ignorant about the Constitution and Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Here are some broad exceptions to the constitutional right to the freedom of speech:
1. Libel, slander, and various forms of misleading statements
2. Inciting others to violence
3. Fighting words
4. Disturbing the peace (offensive words can be considered a breach of the peace)
5. Intentional infliction of emotional distress
6. Copyrights & trademarks
7. Obscenity
8. Commercial speech

I may have forgotten one or three, but I think that suffices to make my point that there is nothing remotely like a "near absolute interpretation of the constitutional right to the freedom of speech."

Equally important to the point I'm trying to make is that at least 5/8 of those exceptions were well established as law when the Constitution was written.

Re:Trolls are the lowest form of life. . .

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

Your response demonstrates that you failed to read and understand my points. There will always be limits to freedom of speech, but those limits are much more restrained in the US than the UK, just to go down the list:

1) Libel in the US is a civil matter (not criminal) and requires meeting very strict standards of proof, including proving both that the defendant knowingly made a false statement for the express purpose of defaming the plaintiff (and not as a matter of comedic, satirical, or other protected purpose) and that the plaintiff actually suffered real damages as a result. Libel cases in the US are very difficult to win.. By contrast, the British libel laws are so unfavorable to the defendant's right of free speech that many US States such as California have passed laws to protect their residents from action in British courts.

2) Inciting others to violence is only illegal if there is an imminent threat of lawless action, such as a mob gathered around someone's house who you incite to storm inside. By contrast, British law allows someone to be imprisoned simply for making disrespectful statements about someone or some group that might, at some hypothetical point in the future, incite others to commit violence against.

3) The fighting words doctrine has largely been overturned and, in any case, is not a criminal act in itself, merely recognized as a mitigating defense to a claim of assault or battery.

4) Disturbing the peace is not a charge that can be used as a workaround to target someone's freedom of expression. The courts have ruled on this time and again.

5) Emotional distress is damage in a civil case. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

I'm not going to even bother than the rest, because you clearly missed the point. No right is absolute, but the US Supreme Court guards the freedom of expression in the US much more fiercely than European Courts do.

Cool. Just as good as China

[Toddlerbob]

Yeah, here in China, people can be jailed for "spreading rumours" online. Such measures are necessary to preserve harmony in society. It's nice to see the UK catching up.
(/snark)

Re:Much as I despise trolls

[Mr.CRC]

There is a point to which verbal abuse should be considered to evoke a primal defensive response. I have seen people literally followed around with a harrassing mouth shoved in their faces that they couldn't get away from. While it is honorable to try to defuse a situation like that without resorting to violence, I can also see where someone who is stressed by unknown factors might simply throw a punch. And if I were a judge, in a case like that I might very well just let them walk, considering it legitimate self-defense.

As for internet harrassment, it might be better to sentence people to perform ass kissing services for the harrassed for some period of time. The movement of the justice system away from pushing people to make restitution for harm done, and instead toward universal incarceration for every possible infraction, is a second injustice to victims, as well as being corrosive poison to society. If a guy is an asshole and threatens someone but didn't really mean it, do we really want to spend societal resources to imprison them for TWO FUCKING YEARS! Does anybody ever think? I mean really THINK about the implications of what they are saying when they cheer on the state to put the boot to more faces? Do you really think the "there ought to be a law" model can go on forever without that boot ultimately winding up on your own face?

That we can simply fix all social problems with another law and more imprisonment is going to lead us to our doom.

Re:Define trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

Journalists do what journalists do - oversimplify and sacrifice meaning. Politicians making speeches do the same.

Here's what the actual judicial guidelines have to say about it:

Only communications that are credible threats of violence, harassment, or stalking (such as aggressive Internet trolling) which specifically targets an individual or individuals, or breaches a court order designed to protect someone (such as those protecting the identity of a victim of a sexual offence) will be prosecuted

So that's:
- Credible threats of violence
- Harrassment (itself defined in law, under the Protection from Harrassment Act 1997)
- Stalking ... which specifically targets an individual or individuals (this would multiple actions over a period, directed at one victim)
- Breaching a court order.

Posting "U sux!!!" on someone's YouTube video is not prosecutable. Posting "I'm gonna track you down and feed you your own testicles" might be, if a lawyer could persuade a judge that the threat was "credible". Posting anything of the sort on every video posted by a particular user would probably qualify as stalking.

Re:Much as I despise trolls

[CanHasDIY]

Where does the freedom to "say what I don't like" end and harassment begin?

That's for the law to decide. Don't be such a pussy that you can't handle some punk ass talking shit.

Besides, if the cops are going to show up either way, wouldn't the smart money be on you calling them rather than you being the idiot they're coming to arrest?

Re:F the UK

[RabidReindeer]

All of these cases are nuanced and require careful balance

It doesn't seem that nuanced. It seems to me the question is whether you're in trouble for expressing an unpopular idea (genuine infringement of freedom of expression), or for encouraging violence/panic. The epilepsy example is a deliberate act to cause harm which happens to take the form of a digital submission, but it's not really 'expression'.

I'm sure there are some interesting edge-cases, but this distinction seems important.

There's a third path: direct assault with intent to cause distress. That's what trolls are famous for, and recent news reports have had quite a bit of coverage of everything from people having to alter their lifestyles to cases of outright troll-induced suicide.

Re:F the UK

[nukenerd]

What idiot modded this as informative?

I suggest reading a bit of history before you post crap like this. Just try The Desert War and The Battle for Caen as examples. The British, Americans, Russians and French all fought ferociously against the Germans, and at one point it was the British alone.