Internet troll is jailed after mocking deaths of teenagers online.

[mariodude23]

I understand that this is morally bankrupt and terrible and all that... But I kinda feel like this is dangerously close to (if not already) stepping on our first amendment rights... But I mean, this was in Britain, right? Same laws don't apply. Still, something just doesn't feel right about it.

But hey, do the crime, do the time.

I don't think that insulting the death of a person by saying "I fell asleep on the track lolz" is free speech. It's borderline harassment.

I know that with freedom comes responsibility, but have you ever heard the anonymous quote "Although I don't agree with what you just said, I'll defend to the death your right to say it." If you don't believe in free speech even for people you despise, then you really don't believe in free speech. Besides, I find the whole "cyberbullying" idea tough to swallow, because in any competent communication site, there's always an easy way to block off communication with someone who's harassing you, those block buttons are there for a reason!

To a certain (limited) extent, I agree. However, lines are drawn everywhere. For example, you aren't legally allowed to discriminate against the disabled, racially and sexually different, in a workplace (whether it be in hiring or with interaction) isn't that an infringement on your beliefs and speech?
The idea of something as ludicrous as this being acceptable when it has no base in freedom of speech (compared to racism, religious elitism and sexism) is straight-jacket wearing insane.

 

[Neaco]

So much for the 1st amendment, huh?

I don't want to make a "dumb american" comment but your law does not apply to any other country other than yours.

No no, as an American I fully support your comment. Dudeman... Learn to Read.

Wow, condescending much? You can't write if you can't read. (inb4 B-BUT HELEN KEL) you know what I mean Besides the country this incident took place wasn't the point of my post at all, i'm saying that people should be able to speak their minds without being put in prison, regardless of how ugly their thoughts may be.

Do we not take the right to vote from the mentally unstable? This guy and many others like him are not worthy of adding to the collective human knowledge pool if this is what they will offer us.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Why don't comedians go to jail for taking the piss out of everything, even when it's so soon? Gotfried made a 9/11 joke like 3 days after the attack, why isn't he jailed?

I think the difference here is that this guy specifically sought out a grieving family, right after a tragic accident (I have no idea what it must feel like to have to bury your child, but it is probably one of the worst situations a person can go through). Even though he did not know these people he went out of his way to distress them, his joke was meant to hurt and distress the families, and the humour would come from laughing at their expense, whereas Gotfried, a known gross-out comedian, tried (and kinda failed) to bend a recent tragic occurence into comedy. He wasn't meaning to be malicious, and it wasn't directed at the people who were recently bereaved. It must also be considered that Gotfried was almost thrown from the stage because of that joke.

While both were done with bad taste, I think the legal difference that would be made is one was an attempt at humour, not meant to cause more harm, whereas the other was proved by the court to solely have been done to harass and distress people, which there is a law against in the U.K.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

In other words your attempt at making a point against me backfired...

Really?

Sickipedia

Please don't drop to point scoring. It's a very asinine way to conduct yourself.

This isn't some obscure easy to overlook piece of the general unpleasantness we expect of the internet (especially of Youtube comments sections) this was an active attempt to try and get at the family in question.

And yet the family didn't? You put up something public - it gets defaced. There's going to be someone who actively attacks anything you put up. Ask any of the Escapist contributors.

If following a family in grieving in order to have some fun at their expense isn't a serious offense to you then I'd hate to know what you consider to be going over the limit.

Ringing up a celebrity on a radio show to tell him you've shagged his grand-daughter?
Stating the Royal Family had Princess Di shot?
Joking about 9/11 just after the event and saving it with a joke about coprophilia and pedophilic incest?
Laughing about shredding a husband's penis?
Asking if you can throw an epileptic in with the washing to get it spin dried?

Think the worst anyone got from that was fired.

In any case I'm going to guess that most of these people tend to be expressing disagreement with people and thus their mocking/trolling tends to be in expressing their views (the case that was stated in the beginning was seemingly just a case of cruelty for cruelty's sake).

So the entire basis rests on whether you think it was unnecessary cruelty? How would you even apply that in court?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The world isn't black and white.

Law has to be though. If it's grey, then you will have it painted one colour or the other by good lawyers.

laws change over time, expecting perfection from the government will leave you disappointed.

At the moment, I just expect them to turn up. And they don't even get that right.

 

[dudeman0001]

I understand that this is morally bankrupt and terrible and all that... But I kinda feel like this is dangerously close to (if not already) stepping on our first amendment rights... But I mean, this was in Britain, right? Same laws don't apply. Still, something just doesn't feel right about it.

But hey, do the crime, do the time.

I don't think that insulting the death of a person by saying "I fell asleep on the track lolz" is free speech. It's borderline harassment.

I know that with freedom comes responsibility, but have you ever heard the anonymous quote "Although I don't agree with what you just said, I'll defend to the death your right to say it." If you don't believe in free speech even for people you despise, then you really don't believe in free speech. Besides, I find the whole "cyberbullying" idea tough to swallow, because in any competent communication site, there's always an easy way to block off communication with someone who's harassing you, those block buttons are there for a reason!

To a certain (limited) extent, I agree. However, lines are drawn everywhere. For example, you aren't legally allowed to discriminate against the disabled, racially and sexually different, in a workplace (whether it be in hiring or with interaction) isn't that an infringement on your beliefs and speech?
The idea of something as ludicrous as this being acceptable when it has no base in freedom of speech (compared to racism, religious elitism and sexism) is straight-jacket wearing insane.

A good point, but those are hate crimes which are a much more slippery slope, and even then penalties are only imposed if people are say refusing to higher certain groups or rallying against certain groups of people with death threats and what not (if someone yelled "I fucking hate faggots!" on a street corner, there'd be no arrest.) Modern society has had to make pretty huge leaps to make sure that minoritys are treated (more) like equals, and those laws are there to make sure that we don't fall back into our old ways of keeping slaves, burning jews, etc. After all;

He who does not learn from his history, is destined to eat raw meat and projectile vomit EVERYWHERE!

I think that's how that quote goes...

 

[oktalist]

your freedom of speech is null and void the moment it offends someone.

Causing offence to someone does not infringe their rights, because not being offended is not a right.

But it's irrelevant because the guy in this case was not jailed for causing offence, that would be rather Orwellian if he was. He was jailed for causing distress, which is quite different.

If I call you a fucking moron and you're not offended by it... Groovy

If You ARE offended by it... Well... here are the limits on freedom of speech

http://www.freedomforum.org/packages/first/curricula/educationforfreedom/supportpages/L04-LimitsFreedomSpeech.htm

I'm not sure whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. Regardless, freedom of speech is an amorphous, synthetic concept of philosophy and ethics, so there can be no universal definition of what its limits are.

United States law is completely irrelevant here.

 

[Iron Mal]

Sorry oh great one our inferior understanding of language has allowed us to offend your oh so intelligent and righteous opinion. You do realise that this is a subject that really does warrant the word FUCK right, I mean whatever side of the argument you fall on. Now it totally agree that this Trollchild did something genuinely disgusting to those people.
Now you are the primary kind of well spoken internet lurker that pisses me off, the fact that you believe so self-righteously that you are right, you can convince yourself that you can talk down to someone simply because they made a point you don't like. I feel I must kerb this as best I can, because anyone with a reasonable understanding of language must realise that. 1. there is no greater way to prove how much of an a**h*le you are than parading your pseudo-intellectual crap around to make yourself seem better than someone else. 2. There is no bigger mistake than totally judging someone's entire character because of an individual paragraph on a forum in what amounts to little more than a troll thread.


So please get down of your high horse and talk like a reasonable and socially viable human being or stay on it until someone pulls you off.

Well for someone who berates me for judging someone based on their response in a discussion you sure as hell take a hypocritical turn there by automatically assuming I must be a pseudo-intellectual 'holier than thou' type (was it the Grey Knight avatar that gave you that impression?).

My main point against the guy I quoted was that he seemed to believe that because it was just a bunch of words means that no-one should have been bothered by this and that we should all just 'grit our teeth and bear it', my stance of writing it in a somewhat patronising tone and by talking down to him was intentional (I even mention this at the end of my first point as my way of trying to get across to him the idea that words can in fact be harmful), I don't hold myself to be better than anyone (trust me, I can admit that I'm shit in many ways, I probably am an arsehole and, unlike you, I don't feel the need to censor myself) and I'll admit that I understand if people disagree with me (everyone has their own opinion after all) but this doesn't make me a stuck-up white knight crusader type because I believe I'm right (everyone thinks they're right, that's not self-rightiousness that's how opinions bloody work).

If you feel the need to kerb me and my way of carrying out debates and discussions then by all means feel free to (preferably through messages rather than these posts so as not to interfere with others on here having their own discussions about the subject at hand), you won't have an easy time 'pulling me off my high horse' but you're free to try (maybe I'll knock you off yours, who knows?).

 

[Baneat]

While both were done with bad taste, I think the legal difference that would be made is one was an attempt at humour, not meant to cause more harm, whereas the other was proved by the court to solely have been done to harass and distress people, which there is a law against in the U.K.

I think that is extreemly difficult to prove, if not possible. Maybe his humour was just black beyond anything imaginable.. thing is, no idea. That distinction doesn't seem practical.

 

[dudeman0001]

*eddited because, lolmisinterpretation.*

 

[Neaco]

The world isn't black and white.

Law has to be though. If it's grey, then you will have it painted one colour or the other by good lawyers.

laws change over time, expecting perfection from the government will leave you disappointed.

At the moment, I just expect them to turn up. And they don't even get that right.

I got it! We just let the matrix run things until our hormones and social discrepancies are too much for it to handle. That ought to buy us a few years.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I see this thread is still going places.

Still talking about Westboro Baptist for some reason, even though it was a completely different country.

Still talking about slippery slopes, as if they were a REAL FUCKING THING, and not a LOGICAL FALLACY.

Still imagining he got prosecuted for "speaking his mind, yo" and not for a criminalized form of harassment.

Still arguing about whether or not he deserves punishment (he does) instead of whether or not jail time was the appropriate punishment (it wasn't).

In case you're curious, here's a bit from an article about exactly what Mr. Duffy was charged with.

This prosecution was brought under section 127 of the Malicious Communications Act 2003 which made it an offence for a person to use public electronic communications networks, such as telephone and internet to send or communicate grossly offensive material to others, as well as to send or communicate material which is offensive, indecent or obscene.

This law (section 127 of the Malicious Communications Act 2003) is unique in the sense that the offence is committed upon the act of communication and a person would be committing the offense even in the event that the communication was not received by the intended recipient or was intercepted prior to anyone actually taking offense to the subject matter.

Law has been on the books for 8 years, guys. Incredibly enough, the thin edge of the fucking wedge has not resulted in your precious right to be an asshole being curtailed. Sean clearly got a little carried away with his douchebaggery. Incredibly, there are still SOME consequences in life for being an utter shithead. Let's all wring our hands about it and treat it like the end of free speech, instead of a stupid prick getting the comeuppance he richly deserved.

 

[FalloutJack]

Speaking as someone who has Aspergers...

But is it to the same degree as this guy?

This one is a bit fiddly. On the one hand, he's a dickhead. On the other hand, he may very well be completly ignorant of what effect words can have on people, I know I was for a while.

Especially since his disorder could very well interfere with his ability to tell the difference between dark humor and insults.

Personally, it is not. I'm highly-functional. However, I must say that I am not only a member of this club, but I've also worked with 'em. And I state that the kind of person who does psychological harm to grieving folks is not doing it because he doesn't know any better (i.e. due to a diagnosis). That does not compute. The kind of person that wouldn't realize it on the spectrum also wouldn't be so able to articulate it. So, in my eyes, he either has other issues (like being an evil-minded prick) or an idiot. Frankly, I would gladly stab the thumbs off of either of these.

 

[MeatMachine]

Freedom of speech is supposed to be in place to protect people like HIM, not people like the FAMILY.

Don't get me wrong, I am not at all sympathetic for him, but imprisoning him for this behavior is absolubtly wrong.

For example, the Westboro Baptist Church got away with protesting outside of a dead soldier's memorial service, shouting over the gates that he deserved what he got. As hard as it is to keep one's personal feelings from driving them to fight back legally, in the end, the fact that the church was ALLOWED to say such filth, ESPECIALLY in such a manner, is a shining example that that soldier's death was NOT for nothing.

When feelings takes priority over freedom, the world is truly being set back.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

While both were done with bad taste, I think the legal difference that would be made is one was an attempt at humour, not meant to cause more harm, whereas the other was proved by the court to solely have been done to harass and distress people, which there is a law against in the U.K.

I think that is extreemly difficult to prove, if not possible. Maybe his humour was just black beyond anything imaginable.. thing is, no idea. That distinction doesn't seem practical.

Yeah, I suppose you're right, I was just guessing there, and I only read the full article there now (even though I'm always the one complaining about people not fully reading threads- whoops!)

Turns out he was cautioned for doing similar things in 2009, so you couldn't argue that his asbergers meant he didn't know the distress he was causing, and if you read the article what he did was absolutely sick! It seems there were about half a dozen teen deaths and suicides that he deliberately posted horrible remarks and photoshopped pictures of, he even left captioned flowers at the site where a girl died in a car crash with a horrible message on it.

I don't know the exact legal terms for when acting horrible turns into illegal harassment, but I think he's several light years over the line.

 

[mariodude23]

I understand that this is morally bankrupt and terrible and all that... But I kinda feel like this is dangerously close to (if not already) stepping on our first amendment rights... But I mean, this was in Britain, right? Same laws don't apply. Still, something just doesn't feel right about it.

But hey, do the crime, do the time.

I don't think that insulting the death of a person by saying "I fell asleep on the track lolz" is free speech. It's borderline harassment.

I know that with freedom comes responsibility, but have you ever heard the anonymous quote "Although I don't agree with what you just said, I'll defend to the death your right to say it." If you don't believe in free speech even for people you despise, then you really don't believe in free speech. Besides, I find the whole "cyberbullying" idea tough to swallow, because in any competent communication site, there's always an easy way to block off communication with someone who's harassing you, those block buttons are there for a reason!

To a certain (limited) extent, I agree. However, lines are drawn everywhere. For example, you aren't legally allowed to discriminate against the disabled, racially and sexually different, in a workplace (whether it be in hiring or with interaction) isn't that an infringement on your beliefs and speech?
The idea of something as ludicrous as this being acceptable when it has no base in freedom of speech (compared to racism, religious elitism and sexism) is straight-jacket wearing insane.

A good point, but those are hate crimes which are a much more slippery slope, and even then penalties are only imposed if people are say refusing to higher certain groups or rallying against certain groups of people with death threats and what not (if someone yelled "I fucking hate faggots!" on a street corner, there'd be no arrest.) Modern society has had to make pretty huge leaps to make sure that minoritys are treated (more) like equals, and those laws are there to make sure that we don't fall back into our old ways of keeping slaves, burning jews, etc. After all;

He who does not learn from his history, is destined to eat raw meat and projectile vomit EVERYWHERE!

I think that's how that quote goes...

I wish that I could have just +1'd this, but I have to concede in a reply. Have a good day.

 

[Iron Mal]

Really?

Sickipedia

Please don't drop to point scoring. It's a very asinine way to conduct yourself.

Seeing as I'm not overtly familiar with Sickipedia and your example to me was actually Jessi Slaughter (a girl who argueably antagonised the people who mocked her) I'm still gonna have to say that your counter-arguements weren't very convincing and didn't bear much relevence to the incident in question.

And when I say points I'm not keeping count or anything like that (quality over quantitiy and what-not).

And yet the family didn't? You put up something public - it gets defaced. There's going to be someone who actively attacks anything you put up. Ask any of the Escapist contributors.

And this is acceptable to you just because lots of people do it?

You're going back to that arguement again? (the one that stopped working before you even left primary school?)

We expect crass and uncivil behavior on places like Youtube and random message boards because of the fact that the people on there are anonymous (and we all know what happens when you give people anonymity), a family's tribute page to their daughter on Facebook (somewhere where the people you're insulting are something more than just a screen name and the evidence behind that is right in front of you) isn't really where you expect someone to show the malicious side of the internet.

You would be more horrified to hear about someone carrying a knife around a school than you would if they did it down a back alley in London at night.

Ringing up a celebrity on a radio show to tell him you've shagged his grand-daughter?
Stating the Royal Family had Princess Di shot?
Joking about 9/11 just after the event and saving it with a joke about coprophilia and pedophilic incest?
Laughing about shredding a husband's penis?
Asking if you can throw an epileptic in with the washing to get it spin dried?

Think the worst anyone got from that was fired.

I agree that all of those are horrible things, and if those followed the same pattern of thrusting themselves right into the face of their intended targets in such a way that would be distressing and cause harm then I would argue that action should be taken against those perpitrators as well.

So the entire basis rests on whether you think it was unnecessary cruelty? How would you even apply that in court?

Well we manage to determine what is considered 'offensive' or inflamaory in court for cases of slander, defamation of character and harassment so why should this be any different?

You're trying to defend it under the notion that 'lots of people do it and they don't get punished', something I'm fairly certain wouldn't hold up in court either.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Yes, it's exaggeration to underline a point. Where exactly does one start and the other stop? Because if you can't state that, then you can't legislate it.

It isn't clearly defined in law (there are degrees of interpretation in criminal law, not many, but some), but as a matter of ethical foundation, I think punishing someone for creating a youtube video with the SOLE INTENTION of literally torturing someone psychologically for laughs is a good place to start.

As for the other "Free Speech" arguments (which don't really apply because the incident occurred in the UK and not the US): This is an instance where the only possible intention of a work is pure malice, plain and simple.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Freedom of speech is supposed to be in place to protect people like HIM, not people like the FAMILY.

Don't get me wrong, I am not at all sympathetic for him, but imprisoning him for this behavior is absolubtly wrong.

For example, the Westboro Baptist Church got away with protesting outside of a dead soldier's memorial service, shouting over the gates that he deserved what he got. As hard as it is to keep one's personal feelings from driving them to fight back legally, in the end, the fact that the church was ALLOWED to say such filth, ESPECIALLY in such a manner, is a shining example that that soldier's death was NOT for nothing.

When feelings takes priority over freedom, the world is truly being set back.

Welcome to Britain! Have a cup of tea, don't get dirt on the carpet and try not to diss the government in front of the telescreen.

Our laws state that a person's human rights do not include being able to impose ourselves on another person in any way that would cause intense distress or harm, hence why we were able to block the Westboro Baptists from travelling over here to protest in Britain, because they count as spreading "Hate Speach". It was the same with the American guy who was burning Korans.

Our government may have gone a bit too far in some instances (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm), but it's just another way of looking at speech rights, I have the right to not have people protesting messages of hate at my funeral in Britain, whereas in America you have the right to protest the messages of hate.