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

Much as I despise trolls

[msobkow]

As much as I despise trolls, I despise heavy-handed government censorship even more.

Re:Much as I despise trolls

[Mr. Slippery]

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

In terms of content, you can say whatever the fuck you like about me. In terms of place and time and manner, you can't say whatever the fuck you like on my front lawn, because that's trespassing. You can't say whatever the fuck you like about me in my living room, because if you break into my house I will engage in legitimate self-defense and you will be quickly be unconscious or dead.

You can say whatever the fuck you like about me when we're in public, but if you continually follow me around at some point you are expressing a threat and committing assault. That has nothing to do with what you're saying, though, it applies even if you're silent -- it's the physical presence that's a threat.

You can say whatever the fuck you like about me on the internet or on TV or in a letter or on the phone or whatever. Unless you make a specific threat, and can be reasonably believed to have the means to carry it out, it's not assault. "I'm going to drop a nuclear bomb on Tom's house!" is not a threat, unless you command a nuclear arsenal. "Somebody ought to shoot Tom!" is offensive, but I don't have a right to not be offended, and unless someone is pointing a gun at me at that moment it's not assault or encouraging assault.

A nation with an interest in freedom could handle these cases without any new laws against trolling, using the same legal principles that have existed since the first idiot was prosecuted for mailing a threatening letter. But a moral panic about the 'net is fertile ground for authoritarians.

Re:Much as I despise trolls

[ihtoit]

we HAVE Magna Carta. We HAVE a Bill of Rights. We HAVE a written Constitution.

1215, 1688 and 1688 respectively.

yeah sorry, America, your Constitution is based on a document written into Law 88 years before yours was.

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. . .

[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.

They are elusive

[Kohath]

Police are searching for them under an old Ethernet bridge.

Re:The law comes to Deadwood.

[stephanruby]

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.

No, this law is mostly about drinking and tweeting, and tweeting racist things as a result.

In the UK, the maximum penalty for someone drinking and driving, when a life isn't actually lost as a result, is up 6 months in jail. However, if you happen to be drinking and tweeting (and not driving), then that maximum penalty is multiplied by four.

Free speech cannot survive when speakers are shouted down, bullied and hounded off stage.

Free speech cannot survive the mob.

May be, but not in the tweeting cases prosecuted by the Crown. In each case, the mob sided with the target of the tweets, not the offender. And of course, we're not talking about online school bullying with this particular law. If this law was aimed at stopping school bullying, there would be a provision for underaged offenders, which there isn't. And it would be applied to those school cases, which as of now it hasn't.

...that would not be tolerated off-line in the name of free speech

That's a nice idea, but you haven't spend any time around drunk people. When a drunk person gets belligerent, you throw them out of the premises, or if you're not the owner of the premises, you walk away from them. Throwing them in jail is the last possible resort, only to be used, when that person is a danger to others, or a danger to himself (like when he or she is hitting other people, or trying to drive a car).

Throwing trolls in jail isn't going to solve the problem of trolls. For one thing, there will still be people trolling from outside the UK (they will do so just because they can, as a taunt against the British authorities). And for a second thing, people aren't going to stop drinking and tweeting, even inside the UK, so the angry judges and politicians are likely to be even more frustrated with the results and come up with even more draconian measures.

Re:F the UK

[tehcyder]

Holding people responsible for making threats of death and rape is indeed an infringement on free speech, in the same way that locking someone in prison for murder is an infringement of their right to liberty.

Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from its consequences, and the fact that it's on the internet is entirely irrelevant.