UK.gov To Treat Online Abuse as Seriously as Hate Crime in Real Life (theregister.co.uk)

The UK's Crown Prosecution Service has pledged to tackle online abuse with the same seriousness as it does hate crimes committed in the flesh. From a report: Following public concern about the increasing amount of racist, anti-religious, homophobic and transphobic attacks on social media, the CPS has today published a new set of policy documents on hate crime. This includes revised legal guidance for prosecutors on how they should make decisions on criminal charges and handle cases in court. The rules officially put online abuse on the same level as offline hate crimes -- defined as an action motivated by hostility or prejudice -- like shouting abuse at someone face-to-face. They commit the CPS to prosecuting complaints about online material "with the same robust and proactive approach used with online offending." Prosecutors are told to consider the effect on the wider community and whether to identify both the originators and the "amplifiers or disseminators."

Comments

Re: Good, nazis need to pay

[MightyMartian]

No, by "Nazi", I mean Nazi. In other words, a person who holds a fascist, white supremacist ideology, who advocates for an authoritarian nationalist government that will ensure the supremacy and purity of Aryan peoples.

You know, like the tiki-torch bearing thugs who marched in Charleston chanting slogans like "Sieg heil", "blood and soil", and "Jews will not replace us", while making Nazi salutes. Those are Nazis, and while I'll concede not all the "freedom of speech" marchers in Charleston were out and out Nazis, I'd say if you continued to march alongside people burying pro-fascist pro-Nazi flags and shields and who were chanting those sorts of slogans, if you're not a Nazi, then you're either deaf and blind, or have a pretty fucking screwy moral compass.