Slashdot Mirror
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.
As much as I despise trolls, I despise heavy-handed government censorship even more.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Who gets to decide what qualifies as trolling?
." 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.
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 . .
. . . 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.
I can trollolol people in jolly good England all day long, but if they troll us back, we can report them?
bloody hell.
I hope they have defined properly what they mean with "trolling". By definition, trolling means writing inflammatory comments that excite people to write indignant responses. Thus, for example, bullying or threats do not technically count as trolling.
Police are searching for them under an old Ethernet bridge.
Of course. It is just like in 1984: Language gets controlled to that people may not voice their thoughts anymore.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Of course it's on topic. The topic is trolls.
Liberals in the US are salivating over the day they can do this.
I must really complain about the use of the term "liberal" as the far right democrat as a contrast to the further right republican party. A liberal, would be for the absolution of these laws, in such a manner that it would grant more freedoms or liberties to individuals.
Now, as for my stance on the law, I don't like it from the stance of increasing state power over individuals. At best, laws pertaining to harassment should be all that is needed for such cases. Restraining orders as a start, then go criminal if that is violated. If a person continually harasses others over an extended period of time, then forced psychiatric sessions for them or community service to force them to do something they don't want, without confining them. If there is any lacking aspect to what is already done, it is enforcement. Police are not willing or simply don't care enough to track down individuals outside of high profile cases. Too much happening, and not enough pay to care.
So why should some get 2 YEARS for this?
I live in the UK and I think Chris Grayling is an utter twat. I hope he loses his seat in the election, and that causes a terminal depression.
He deserves it.
There are already laws against harassment, against threatening rape or murder, against pretty much anything he wants to try and cover with further legislation. So fuck him, I reserve the right to offend him and if I see him in the street then he'll find out that I don't just do that online.
You know it only applies to specific types of comments right?. ie "I'm going to kill you" "I'm going to rape you" type comments. You are free to be as much of a troll-tard as you like as long as you are not threatening someone.
From TFA one particular example was a girl who came out not supporting a return to professional football of a convicted rapist. She had extensive death and rape threats sent to her via social media. If you were to have written the same comments on a letter and posted it to her it would also have been a crime.
These laws are separated to libel or defamation laws.
Anyone that complain about government, denounce abuses, disagree with GHCQ surveillance and so on will be considered trolls.
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)
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.
This isn't about trolling.
This is about abusive, manipulative, disruptive and often threatening behavior that would not be tolerated off-line in the name of free speech --- because it is the enemy of free speech.
Free speech cannot survive in an atmosphere of fear.
Free speech cannot survive when speakers are shouted down, bullied and hounded off stage.
Free speech cannot survive the mob.
Threatening to hit someone when you're in person is assault. Yet, if done over the internet, you can threaten to kill them, rape them, burn their house down, etc... and that should be legal?
Calling in a bomb threat isn't free speach, no matter if you were 'joking' or not. Screwing with people's lives, even if it's only one person and not a 'terroristic threat' shouldn't be, either.
And the strange thing is ... I'd normally agree with you about the freedom of speach and people need to grow a thicker skin... but once you get threats of violence, that's drawing the line.
I've had a stalker, and even though she was just crazy, not violent, I can say that you will *never* understand what this can do to a person. I knew who my stalker was (she worked with me, and management wouldn't do crap about it; luckily, we worked different shifts) ... but you start panicking every time you see someone in a crowd that might be her. You shut down when someone that you've chatted with on mailing lists meets you in person for the first time and expresses enthusiasm for meeting you.
So, in summary : fuck you and I hope you die in a fire. (yay freedom of speach!)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I think a lot of people are misinterpreting the intent of this. Much as I despise the current UK government, and am deeply concerned about surveillance and censorship and erosion of privacy and free speech generally, I think in this case it's not what's being proposed at all.
Basically, I believe in being free to do as you please unless it harms others. There's no doubt that trolling, in some cases, does harm, but right now the punishment isn't very harsh for the worst cases, and most people that indulge in trolling feel they have the "right" to do it (those were the exact words used by a recent troll who attacked the McCanns online and was called out on it by the news media; she later committed suicide. A pretty sad case for everyone concerned). This is confusing the right to free speech with a non-existent right to slander and libel with impugnity. If you are attacked, and it harms you (for some definition of harm) then you should have the right to prosecute the perpetrator to the extent the law allows.
All this is proposing is that harmful trolling is taken more seriously, and I agree with that. A judge will rule on the merit of any case brought, and hand down a sentence as he sees fit. This is merely proposing that the maximum available sentence is extended from 6 months to 2 years, and I agree with that. Note that this has nothing to do with the government having greater powers to monitor online activity - the judiciary have nothing to do with the government in the UK. If someone is trolled online and they feel it has harmed them, it is up to them to report it and press charges, and present their case in court. The government are not involved at all.
Imprecise laws give authorities a great deal of discretion about the threat of prosecution. And discretion here is another name for arbitrary power.
Do they mean targeted harassment or libel? Or theft or fraud? Or do they mean playing devil's advocate?
Conflating the harassment of the McCanns with "trolling", a broad term, is just a power grab by an opportunist. It might sound politically beneficial right now but curbs on basic freedoms have blowback. Consequences.
The article reads like satire. I'd expect it out of a backward or totalitarian regime, but not the UK.
His use was correct. Liberals are the first to demand everyone else walk on egg shells when their feelings get hurt.
A Libertarian will be the ones trying to remove such laws.
Yet it is right wing governments bringing in these laws. My right wing government loves increasing jail sentences, creating new crimes, expanding spying on their own citizens and the libertarian part stays quiet as long as their are tax cuts promised and certain parts of government are shrunk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I've said it many times before, and will say it again. The UK is not what it used to be. It used to be the bastion of European freedom, the saviors against Hitler.
At this time, they're exactly the opposite. They're on the front-lines of oppression, limiting freedom of speech and monitoring online and offline behavior all in the name of "save the children".
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
His use was correct. Liberals are the first to demand everyone else walk on egg shells when their feelings get hurt.
A Libertarian will be the ones trying to remove such laws.
liberal, a. and n. A. adj.: 5. Of political opinions: Favourable to constitutional changes and legal or administrative reforms tending in the direction of freedom or democracy.
Ezekiel 23:20
no, retroactive censorship does exist - in most democracies, actually. Prime example is the Hansard record, where entire debates have been erased on Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's watches in attempts to hide their criminality. Fortunately some of us have eidetic memories and reliable means of caching web content.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Yet, if done over the internet, you can threaten to kill them, rape them, burn their house down, etc... and that should be legal
1. That's already illegal in every European country.
2. Threatening to kill someone is not trolling, and any politician who conflates trolling with death threats should be kicked out of his or her office ASAP.
it's a matter of public record. Sort of.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Health minister Simon Burns must consider himself lucky not to have been disciplined - not so far anyway - for describing, under his breath in the Commons yesterday, Speaker John Bercow as ''a stupid, sanctimonious dwarf''.
Although the remark was picked up by the Press Gallery, Mr Bercow did not hear it, or affected not to hear it.
But when he heard about it, he said that no record had been made, implying that he had ordered the comment to be excluded from Hansard, the official report.
The Speaker of the House has the authority to order any word uttered in the Chamber (which has a live television feed to satellite and cable in operation whenever the Chamber is in session) to be stricken from the official record. Said, essentially in public, but retroactively censored hence offering some degree of deniability - if only there wasn't that pesky press gallery which is invariably full for the juicy debates!
So an incident which occupied the headlines in today's newspapers did not officially take place. The Speaker has wielded his censor's pen, and censored (or should the word be ''redacted'') the comment from the record.
Hansard is not a verbatim report and comments made by MPs ''from a sedentary position'' are generally not recorded, unless they give rise to exchanges in the chamber.
But tinkering with Hansard can be perilous. Some years ago, Speaker Horace King was involved in angry exchanges with a Tory MP named Donald Box. Later, privately, Box told the Speaker that he had got his facts wrong, so the Speaker agreed to excise the row from Hansard.
Incidentally, not too many months ago (July I think it was) a long list of names was read out in the Chamber, those names all being intimately connected with Sinn Fein and alluding to allegations that those names were connected with activities some might consider not quite legal. Like, for instance, plotting and executing the Brighton bombings. The entire record of the live televised debate was erased from Hansard but not before it had already been published.
Things get progressively darker from there. I have a scrape of Hansard from back when it first went online, I'll have to do a rescrape and run a diff, because I do recall a bit of a panic on when it was realised that there was information in there that the Government would rather we forgot - like for instance, the debates in 1958 concerning the permanent scrapping of the Blue Streak nuclear deterrent (and calling into question the entire point of the V project) in favour of the insanely expensive and as then untested Trident programme, the 1971 nonevents surrounding the UK's entry into the European Common Market with that secession clause that Teddy Boy Heath absolutely insisted and would brook no debate on it being in there which means that Scotland's split from the UK would have ended the UK's Europe membership because the UK would have technically ceased to exist, and the incredible opposition to Thatcher's plan to send our entire Naval force to the Falklands to liberate a few sheep from those pesky Argies in 1982.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I know libertarians would say we should wait until the threat is carried out and someone is actually raped and killed, but in the real world most of us would prefer to stop it happening in the first place.
Your right to free speech does not include the right to (seriously) threaten me without recourse.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Um, this law is wholly illiberal, why would liberals ever want this? Anyone wanting this is not liberal by definition.
This is a classic conservative type proposition, not surprisingly, being put forth by the UK's Conservative party who sit on the centre-right (with a handful of far-right elements like Peter Bone).
I suspect what you really mean is "People I don't like will love this law", but whoever those people are, I assure you they're not liberals by the very fact that this law change goes against liberalism.