Offensive, iconoclastic internet trolls will not be prosecuted, says DPP Cases involving trolling on social media sites should now be easier to deal with after the Director of Public Prosecutions published definitive guidelines on the tabloid-fodder phenomenon this morning. Keir Starmer, who will leave his post as DPP in the autumn, said that the interim guidelines the Crown Prosecution Service …
Robin Hood Airport is nominally Doncaster (the ex-RAF Finningley, a Vulcan base), not Nottingham. I do seem to recall that at some point in its inception it was referred to as "Doncaster Nottingham Airport", but that thankfully got lost. According to the airport's website, it is now "Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield", presumably to cover up the fact that Sheffield no longer has an airport (though some would argue that that the one it did have was little more than a tarmac landing strip).*
*However, I understand that Boeing are a bit pissed off that the airport closed just before they finished their tech centre at the side of it - I wonder why (innocent face).
So a message can be more than simply offensive but not actually grossly offensive.
So we need a scale to measure the level of offensiveness and a test to see where 'grossly' starts?
May i suggest we measure it in Politicians?
Although I am trying to work out whether an Osborne would be better or worse than a Miliband or whether the scale bifurcates ...
<i.May i suggest we measure it [offensiveness] in Politicians?</i>
Shurely we should use a scale in which 1 is a meaningful amount, rather than the highest possible end of the scale? Most posts would have to be rated at fractions of a femto-Politician.
Let's not go down the whole gram/kilogram road again.
Good point but the requirement is a fine distinction at the point where offensive becomes grossly offensive.
Unless of course we have two axes - one of grossness and one of offensiveness? We then need only examine the upper right quadrant for the point were legal becomes illegal ...which always seemed a line densely populated by politicians .
It still means the law is fundamentally flawed.
We only have free speech so long as someone in power doesn't decide to lean on the CPS / swap some favours and get a court case through anyway, in which case it gets prosecuted according to the law as it currently is, regardless of what some guidelines say.
So people who might not be liked for other reasons (protesters against the governments pet policies etc.) can be unfairly targeted by this law as its all down to "guidelines" and "interpretation" whether to actually prosecute, and the law itself has little protection built in.
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We only have free speech so long as someone in power doesn't decide to lean on the CPS / swap some favours and get a court case through anyway, in which case it gets prosecuted according to the law as it currently is, regardless of what some guidelines say.
So people who might not be liked for other reasons (protesters against the governments pet policies etc.) can be unfairly targeted by this law as its all down to "guidelines" and "interpretation" whether to actually prosecute, and the law itself has little protection built in.
No mate, you see the protection of the law is that a jury of your peers has to choose to find you guilty. The vast majority of the population think politicians are thieving, lying, cowardly scum and so the chances of getting convicted for saying something along those lines or criticising said thieving, lying, cowardly scum for wasting more of our money is about as close to zero as said chances can get.
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Does this mean I can report the Daily Mail Website for their offensive comments on travellers, gays, teachers, Muslims, the French, brown people, the poor, people from the North, people on disability benefits, the Irish, people who play video games, Americans, women, people with more than 3 children, the jobless, people who go to music festivals, eastern Europeans, “chav’s” and “foreigners”?
I find the way the law is implemented interesting, the student who said something along the lines of "people who do collections on the street for Help the Heroes deserve to have their heads cut off" was charged and made to do community service.
Meanwhile the people threatening to rape and murder her suffered no such punishment.
What I find particularly interesting is one was an opinion, the other was a distinct threat against a single individual.
Curious.
Personally I hate chuggers (charity muggers for the unaccustomed) and always hope for the day I see someone just rage out and punch one in the face. Murders a bit extreme though.
I've never encountered 'Chuggers' with the help for heros guys, they usually stand with their collection box, and I pretty much always put £10-£20 in the bucket anyway, supporting our troops is something I really believe in... And where I go, these are either ex forces or active forces guys!
I agree with your point though, an opinion vs threat is the key difference..
"Nothing whatsoever offensive with that. Or is there?"
But that's just your opinion, you're welcome to that, even if it's moronic. That's the supposed bonus of being in a free democratic nation.
If in response to your comment I went "I'm going to come round your house, rape you then burn it down with you still inside" That's a direct threat . I would expect me to do time, and you to not have to fear for your life. Where as the law at the moment means that the person stating an opinion does time and the person that threatens to rape and murder them doesn't.
Alternatively if I went "You're a dick head, I hope you get run over by a bus" that again is just a hope and as such no punishment is warranted.
As someone once said (George Carlin maybe?) "You have every right to feel offended, and I have every right not to give a fuck."
If a communication is an incitement to commit an offence, an incitement to racial hatred, or likely to lead to a breach of the peace, then arguably the interests of the wider community are at stake, and prosecution at public expense may be warranted.
If the offensive message is defamatory or offensive to the person concerned, why does the public interest require the state to intervene? The courts have ample powers to settle disputes between parties - and the party affected can bring a lawsuit, and if successful, recover their costs.
There is simply no need to waster taxpayers money enforcing manners through criminal sanctions.
"If the offensive message is defamatory or offensive to the person concerned..." There's a big difference between defamation and being offensive.
Defamation can destroy someone's life in extreme cases e.g. lose them their job and any chance of finding another one, or having their spouse leave them. Whether someone finds something offensive or not can be down to personal views; what's offensive to people of one religion isn't to those of another or none, a remark that a man may think is casual could be deeply offensive to the woman he made it to.
Your point about public interest raises the question of when do deeply offensive comments (to some people) or defamation (about a group of people) change from being personal and therefore to be dealt with in a private lawsuit, and when does it become racial hatred or incitement?
Having tried (three times) to get the plod to pay attention to a "a targeted campaign of harassment against an individual" only to be told they couldn't be bothered to even look at it, I shouldn't bother my arse even trying reporting the nasty little cnuts. Just bide your time and then go take a knife to them, that's what I'm planning to do on the nasty little fuckwit who fucked around with my life. Those who don't want to end up in blood feuds shouldn't go starting them.
Apologies seem to be completely out of fashion. Especially prompt and sincere ones.
I would have hoped that the guidelines would suggest there's a major difference between someone who apologises once it becomes clear he's caused offense, or who retracts something that's both hurtful and inaccurate, and someone who refuses to and instead reiterates or reinforces his original post.
I think (hope) it does :
44.A prosecution is unlikely to be both necessary and proportionate where:
a.The suspect has expressed genuine remorse;
b.Swift and effective action has been taken by the suspect and/or others for example, service providers, to remove the communication in question or otherwise block access to it;
c.The communication was not intended for a wide audience, nor was that the obvious consequence of sending the communication; particularly where the intended audience did not include the victim or target of the communication in question; or
d.The content of the communication did not obviously go beyond what could conceivably be tolerable or acceptable in an open and diverse society which upholds and respects freedom of expression.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine recently. A vile individual on Facebook has launched a hateful vendetta saying that he'd have my friend's legs broken, and then, when someone stuck up for him, that samaritan was labelled "a child molester." The police won't do anything, Facebook are uncontactable and have stifled my friend's attempts to clear his name. Some have written the whole thing off as a joke, but say you wanted to apply for a job or wanted to adopt a child, and an internet search threw up "child molester." It wouldn't be so funny then.
If you want to know more, have a read of slashdot - my UserID is NoNotTheMindProbe.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/06/14/1636231/facebooks-complaint-process-is-arbitrary-but-so-is-campaigning
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