Man Goes to Jail for Being an Internet Troll

[JDKJ]

And now it's time for some audience participation. What do you think is most disturbing: The fact that being a troll is literally against the law in the U.K., the fact that Coss' neighbors felt it necessary to inform the police that there was a troll living down the street or the fact that the police thought the matter was important enough to warrant an interview and then formal charges?

I don't like trolls. They're attention-seeking jerks who will say anything to get a rise out of people. When they get demolished in a forum thread, or banned, or even punched in the mouth, I don't mind at all. But I'm having a hard time believing that someone is going to jail for it. Any society that puts people in prison for being a dick is a society that's in deep trouble indeed.

Conversely, as a European, I have no idea why Americans think that being a total douche or an utter imbecile is a God given right of all mankind, that one should be able to be a jackass to the entire world, and that such behaviour should be constitutionally protected, even. A society is defined by civility; what does that say about a society in which the right of the individual to be an incivil, uncouth arsehole is worth more than society's right not to be bothered by him?

It certainly explains a lot about America, though, doesn't it, such as Glenn Beck and idiocy à la "is evolution 'real'?" being a part of political discourse.

I know that the American definition of liberty is the puerile notion of "I can do whatever I want, and everyone who tells me different is a mean old poopiepants"; but here, we tend to look at things in a slightly more sophisticated fashion. Your freedom ends where the other's begins - and I would definitely say that being an arsehole to the point of causing others actual anguish fits the idea of encroaching on another's liberty. So yeah, fuck that guy. I am happy to live in a country where insults are part of the penal code. Being a dick isn't a high good, or something worth protecting.

I would add to your statement that "a society is defined by civility" the oft-quoted words of Winston Churchill, who said that "you can measure the civilization of a society by the way it treats its prisoners." And to incarcerate someone for 18 weeks as an internet troll isn't, in my opinion, a particularly flattering measure of that society's civilization.

You need to rethink that. What you said has nothing to do with how this guy is being treated in jail. You just made a giant non-sequitur. The fact that they jailed him at all says nothing about he is being treated as a prisoner in said jail. Personally, I'd have said take away the guy's internet access for a few years, so if he's gonna make comments like that, he'd have to do it face to face, where payback can be immediate and In your face as well.

If you want to spend the morning splitting hairs and debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, suit yourself. I'm game, if you are. That being said, length of incarceration is squarely a component of a prisoner's treatment at the hands of their government, if not among the defining components thereof. If he'd received a non-custodial sentence, he wouldn't be a prisoner.

It makes no difference. Talking about how one is treated as a prisoner while making a comment about the person even being a prisoner at all, is a non-sequitur. If the article mentioned how the soles of his feet were being beaten with a willow withe for an hour every day, then you could pull out the "treatment of prisoners" comment, as it is, it made no sense. I'm not "Splitting hairs", just pointing out you made a non-sequitur. From the nature of your comment, it seems that you are angry with me for merely pointing out it was a non-sequitur. Ramp down the attitude.

Here, courtesy of Camarilla, is the full text of Churchill's quote:

"A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the state, and even of convicted criminals against the state, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes, and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man these are the symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it."

If after reading it, you remained convinced that Churchill intended his reference to treatment of criminals to refer only to post-incarceration treatment, then fine. Suit yourself. We'll just respectfully disagree on the point (after all, it's at best a niggling point).

And yes, Mum, I'll ramp down the attitude. Just don't send me off to bed without any supper, please.

 

[Whichi]

".. But I'm having a hard time believing that someone is going to jail for it. Any society that puts people in prison for being a dick is a society that's in deep trouble indeed."

..mm. I mean, what are they going to start punishing people for next? War crimes, or something?

a guy in Ohio was almost charged because he was in his backyard "having sex" with his patio table. A neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous, video recorded it and called the police. What's worse in this case? a guy sticking his dong in his table, or the sick f*** videorecording it (reguardless of "evidence"). Some neighbors just need to mind their own f***ing business

 

[AquaAscension]

but what is a dick?

Yes, that is a good question, isn't it?

A dick is apparently someone we send to jail when he says something we don't like.

And here, sir, our definitions part ways. (But may I say that I appreciate you taking time to respond to my criticism - this is how good conversations start and how better information may eventually be obtained, it's... what the current American political system lacks.)

I Would agree that the people who put this man in jail did not like what he said. I don't like what he said. I think I understand the logic flowing here: if we begin throwing people in jail for "sending malicious communications that were grossly offensive", then we could easily begin to throw people in jail for "malicious communications that were mildly offensive" next. In fact, there could presumably be no limit. We could easily find ourselves in a situation in which the almight government is abusing its power by putting people in jail for no reason. In this context, you are absolutely right, and this jailing would be more offensive than the bile this man posted to the internet.

Unfortunately, there is a flip side though, and this law may be like taking a samurai sword into the operating room and using it as a scalpel, but there seems to be a significant lack of respect (at least in American society). People no longer seem to have a good grasp on what is right and what is wrong. We could blame this on poor parenting, on television, on any number of things and we'd probably all be right, but that really won't matter. A government is only as strong as its people and if those people are all a bunch of dicks and other vulgar body parts, then the government will be too. And then this entire point is moot. It'll be cyclical. A bunch of dicks just going around doing what dicks do and fucking each other (sorry for the vulgarity, AND the reference to team America).

I'm a poet. I need my freedom of speech to be upheld because I deal with difficult issues, but dammit, I should be able to find a way to say the things I need to say without hurting other people with my words. And this opens up an entirely new discussion of "how much hurt is acceptable" and "you know, someone will get hurt regardless, so you won't be able to say anything at all after awhile" and I think those points are valid, and I don't have a good way to talk about them yet.

But, like I said, this is how good discussion starts.

 

[Faine']

What publicly stated views would that be?

And if he was adding his own two cents, there is no reason not to do it civilly. I'm not singling him out, either - I remember hearing people laughing about her death, even teachers spouting callous bullshit along the lines of "good riddance!". I was obliged to then point out that they were talking about a deceased mother of two.

Not to speak ill of the departed, but it appears that the woman's frequently ill-informed public statements endeared her as a punching bag and an object of ridicule to the British tabloid press and public. Clearly she was the subject of much public criticism as a result. There's a link in the article to a wiki entry containing a choice sampling of those publicly stated views.

Yep. She did indeed make herself a celebrity via a lot of ill-informed statements, as you put it, though I think by the end she thrived on that and played up to it. The public's reaction to her was generally justified, I felt, though the tabloids could often boarder on venomous. Of course, that's tabloids for you. Then she died. After that it was a strange mix of people suddenly turning right around and praising her when they'd previously attempted to tear her down, or people being incredibly disrespectful. As InterAirplay said, "good riddance!" is really not a sensitive reaction.

Personally, I didn't like her when she was alive and I didn't like her after she'd died either. I did think that what she went through was terribly sad, however, and I felt horrible for the loved ones she left behind, in particular her two children. Turning her into some kind of martyr was ridiculous but a lot of the comments made were inappropriate and disrespectful to the family still mourning her loss. There's also no denying that her death did create a wave of cancer awareness amongst young women.

Getting this back on topic: telling her family that he'd had sex with her corpse does not equal valid critisicm of her person. Also, the fact he targeted a mauling victim in the same way, amongst others, shows that it was not just an opinion he was trying to express but an image he knew would upset the families and friends who visited those memorial websites.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

Indecency at this magnitude SHOULD be a punishable offense, so i Applaud the British Government. And as for all you Americans whining about free speech: you come from the most hypocritical nation on the planet, who will cry for free speech when trolls are arrested or Qurans are burnt, but throw rocks at the Top Gear crew when they drive through Alabama with the words "Homosexuality Rules!" written on the side of their cars. Is THAT free speech? Hypocrites!

Citation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWHeF0W-l0I

 

[Motiv_]

This has been said before, but this isn't a free speech issue. Saying you fucked the corpse of someone's dead loved one (probably among other things along those lines) is the kind of disgusting shit that isn't (and shouldn't be) protected. Just because it was over the Internet doesn't mean it's acceptable.

It's tame compared to the things Westboro Church says in front of the funeral services of fallen war veterans. And which, more likely than not, is protected speech.

Unfortunately enough, I have an answer for this, although I don't agree with it. Gonna play devil's advocate here for a second.

The United States were founded off religious freedom[footnote]Religious pilgrims that weren't allowed to worship how they pleased in England made their way over to America and founded a new country there[/footnote], and while it would please quite a few people for the government to legally bitchslap the WBC, there would be many more ignorant people in the street screaming "IT'S ORWELL'S DREAM ALL OVER AGAIN! BIG BROTEHR IS TAKING AWAY OUR RIGHTS HURR GONNA HIT MY HEAD AGAINST A POLE AGAIN CUZ IT'S FUN"

 

[Bob_F_It]

I have something to say to the people offended by petty trolls:

Your son is mauled to death by a dog and then someone says that they fucked them, and you call that petty?
Maybe you were looking for some reason to use your gif, but that's pretty low standards.

 

[HotFezz8]

That is too funny. Guess realID might have cut down on trolling... at least in the UK.

no. im a troll, as in i am quite happy to ridicule someone for saying something stupid. but thats a different thing to what this bloke did.

basically if you are a troll (a cute cuddly relatively inoffensive one) you will carry on anyway becuase thats how you roll and lets face it, its a joke.

if your a **** sucking ****ed up **** for brains **** who goes out intending to hurt people, like this man is, you will carry on becuaes you get off on it.

 

[lacktheknack]

This seems like a breach of free speech (I know that it didn't happen in the US, but still)...
He does seem like a massive tool but that is what free speech is about. This could be concerning to people on the internet in the UK.

Certain kinds of speech are NOT protected. "I fucked your dead child" is one of the unprotected ones.

Why?

Because there's no appropriate place for it, and in this context, it causes damage to the recipient's psyche. It's like punching someone in the gut and actually injuring them.

 

[lacktheknack]

This seems like a breach of free speech (I know that it didn't happen in the US, but still)...
He does seem like a massive tool but that is what free speech is about. This could be concerning to people on the internet in the UK.

Certain kinds of speech are NOT protected. "I fucked your dead child" is one of the unprotected ones.

According to what legal precedent? I don't think this case would pass appeal in the U.S.

Because the speech caused emotional trauma. It's the equivalent of actually injuring someone.

 

[JDKJ]

This seems like a breach of free speech (I know that it didn't happen in the US, but still)...
He does seem like a massive tool but that is what free speech is about. This could be concerning to people on the internet in the UK.

Certain kinds of speech are NOT protected. "I fucked your dead child" is one of the unprotected ones.

According to what legal precedent? I don't think this case would pass appeal in the U.S.

Because the speech caused emotional trauma. It's the equivalent of actually injuring someone.

I'm inclined to agree that telling someone "I fucked your dead child" isn't a good basis to bring suit in America. Not solely on the basis that the statement caused emotional harm. In the vast majority of American jurisdictions, a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress actually requires proof of a resulting physical manifestation of the claimed emotional distress (e.g., incessant vomiting or migraine headaches or sleepless nights or something of the like). It's entirely insufficient to merely claim that your feelings were hurt by the statement or that it angered you or compounded your grief, etc., etc. Believe it or not, the statement has to have the actual, not equivalent, effect of physical injury. No physical harm, no winning lawsuit.

But all this only relates to a civil action between private individuals. If the issue is whether the government can restrict the statement because it causes emotional distress, then the answer is "No." The statement would likely enjoy protection. The First Amendment doesn't concern itself with hurt feelings. At least that's the current state of play. It may change once the Supreme Court issues its opinion in the Westboro case but it's very unlikely that the Court will not agree with Westboro that its conduct is protected speech.

There is the possibility, albeit remote, that telling someone "I fucked your dead child" face-to-face in a public place (which I doubt the intertubes qualify as) could be "fighting words" as defined by the Court in the Chaplinsky case (i.e., words which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace) and therefore is a proper subject for government restriction. You may be able to convince a court that the statement inflicts injury (although most of the precedents involve defamatory statements) but you'd be hard pressed to convince them that it'd lead you to try kicking someone's ass (you can't very well kick anyone's ass over the intertubes).

 

[Sylocat]

If going on bereavement websites and claiming to have fucked the victims' corpses is protected under free speech, then clobbering this guy with a baseball bat should be protected as well. Free speech ≠ harassment.

This is why I think people like this [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all] should be culled. I mean, yeah, you have free speech, but does that give you the right to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater? And you can say, "Well, social norms are unenforceable, you should just draw the line at causing 'real' harm," well, what gives you the right to decide where the line should be drawn? If I hit Jason Fortuny in the face with a baseball bat, can't I use the same rationale? I can do whatever I want since I'm free to do it, and my personal ethics are the only ones that matter, so why should I pay any regard to someone else's physical safety?

 

[escapist_FTW]

Trolling is surely meant to have some kind of funny side, often it can just be annoying as hell, but it never goes so far as to cause emotional traumatization. This guy clearly didn't do it just because it would be funny, not realising the pain he could cause, he clearly deliberately went out of his way to traumatize and hurt the family. That is just sick.

I hated Jade Goodey because she was basically a selfish cow, but her death raised awareness of cervical cancer, and the government did something about it, and I feel sorry for the family she eft behind, and whilst she did publicise it and milk it till it was dry, she did use the money to go towards cancer research and to pay for her children's care after she had gone.

Now anyone who thinks it is funny and wholly hilarious to go out of their way to traumatize these people is just sick, and quite frankly deserves the fate that the people he was trolling had.

 

[KiKiweaky]

snip

There's a big difference between trolling and what this guy did.

It' not trolling its sick I mean why would you do something like this to a person if you werent a sick twisted individual?

 

[Twilight.falls]

Good riddance, any human being that would even joke about something as depraved as what this man said shouldn't be out and about. The fact that he would even think about such things is sickening.
It startles me very much to think that there are people siding with this man.

 

[SaintWaldo]

Andy, please explain the difference between your advocacy of physical violence to punish speech that you find distasteful and physical restraint by authorities for speech someone else finds distasteful. They seem pretty much equivalent to me.

I put some thought into this, wrote a reply, edited, went back and forth with it a bit, but then it struck me that it really comes down to a very simple concept: Sometimes violence is the answer. It may sound flippant, but there it is.

Well, even though I find your reason unsatisfying and lacking any supporting thoughts, I do appreciate the time you put in to responding. That you would think about it at all was my primary objective.

 

[buhee]

... but the whole point of jail is to contain someone who is a threat to general society. I consider myself a part of general society, and I don't care what the troll has to say.

Actually there are 6 aims of sentencing:
Retribution, Rehabilitation, Reparation, Denunciation, Deterrence and protection of the public (i'm sure that one has a fancy name too but i can't remember it)

Retribution is quite simply the 'eye for an eye' method. They deserve to be punished, so punished they shall be.
Rehabilitation is what it sounds like. People are given sentences that can include compulsary attendance to an alcoholic centre for example.
Reparation is to make up for what they did (ie paying back stolen money, community service). Denunciation (which i have a feeling is what the sentence in question is aiming for) is where you show that the act is undesired by society by punishing it, sometimes more harshly than you would expect in order to get the message across that the behaviour is unacceptable. That ties in with deterrence, after all a prison sentence for trolling would put off a lot of people who would realise that being rude for lols just isn't worth the consequences.
Obviously protection of the public is to protect the public.

 

[SimpleReally]

Lets see him try to troll the other guys in prison now..

 

[WaderiAAA]

I find none of those facts disturbing. I mean, his statement was very offensive. There will always be a limit to freedom of speech when it comes to really offensive stuff and it should be - though the jail time shouldn't be very long. I'd say 30 days maximum in most cases.

 

[Sylocat]

Just out of curiousity, would you guys be cool with sending the dudes who drew cartoons of Mohammed to prison? Because the rage and offense over that shit ran so high that people actually died.

If they duct-taped copies of their cartoons to the walls and windows of a mosque, then yes I would be cool with sending them to prison. If they repeatedly mailed copies of their cartoons to family members of deceased Muslims who had never partaken in any terrorist activities*, then yes I would be cool with sending them to prison. If they posted slanders against specific Muslims whom they had never met and had no connection with any terrorist faction, then yes, I would be cool with sending them to prison.

Free speech doesn't include harassment, slander and defamation. And I for one wouldn't mind living in a society where the dominant philosophy was something other than "I can be as rude to you as I like, under any circumstances, for no reason whatsoever, and if you expect to be treated with some degree of basic civility and respect, than you're a pansy who thinks the world owes him a living."

[sub]* And even with terrorists, I would question ascribing Mohammed to their actions, for the same reason that I don't blame Jesus of Nazareth for the actions of the WBC.[/sub]