No but its a promise from the state that you will never be legally prosecuted for expressing your opinion.Auric said:
That is what we have forum mods for.
Man Goes to Jail for Being an Internet Troll
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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That is what we have forum mods for.
Yes, but Coss wasn't expressing an opinion, was he? He was sending bereaved families vile messages simply to traumatize and antagonize people for his own amusement, which as myself and many others have said before is harassment, not an exercise of free speech.Your once and future Fanboy said:
I think its right that he got fucked in the ass for saying what he said but only because he crossed the line, in fact they should have let the childs parents loose on him.
I don't think i qualify Britain as a Democracy when it was an empire. The only voting the had was in parliament, but even then, the king got the real power (until some point later in the 1800's). They were counted as a monarchy, and when I mean Democracy, I mean as close as you can get to a real democracy. AKA: every adult male and female votes equally and justly on every representative that they have. That is not true with ancient greece (really only athens) who only allowed greek landowners over a certain age to vote, or 10% of their population. I don't know the exact number of people who could vote for parliament, but they were a very small percentage.k-ossuburb said:
Though yes, the US did have that slave problem, but the laws were much more fair then in any other nation. I count it as the blueprint as none of the other democracies had our unique and brilliant 3 branch government. I know the whole checks and balances saying is thrown around a lot, but it really works. And honestly, when George Washington stepped down from his presidency after serving his term, that was an amazing moment as it showed that there could be a change in leadership without a war, conflict, coup, or any kind of death.
I see your point, but if i can make an example; say if i where a humongous asshole, and i went to a veteran home for the survivors of Vietnam or something like that, and I being a douche where to go in there and shout America sucks, you suck, your friends died for nothing, you all deserve to go back to the POW-camps for more torture! (not my opinion of course, just so this wont be taken out of context) And my reason for doing this where just to be an ass!The Fork of Truth said:
They could make me leave, they could charge me with disturbing the peace or something like that. But they could never arrest me based on the words i said.
EDIT: Unless i where threatening them.
But i do understand it if his charges where harassment, I'm just giving an example.
Yeah, freedom of speech boils down to 'the feds can't pistol-whip you for saying that the president is screwing up the country.' It was not designed to protect verbal assault. This guy deserved a YEAR in jail if not more: he's the reason that there's so much shit going down about 'cyberbullying' and 'kids shouldn't be on the internet' and all of those other fever dreams that will probably stab us in the back when we think they're down.
Would you think it wrong that someone be arrested for harassment if they followed someone to work every day making those kinds of lewd comments? Being on the internet doesn't mean that it's somehow not as bad as doing it in person, in fact, the content is often worse because people feel they cannot be punished for what they say. If they cross into criminal harassment it shouldn't matter what medium they do it in; they should be punished for it.
That is NOT what freedom of speech means. Freedom of speech means that the government cannot censor you. The only exceptions in which you can be prosecuted have to do with safety, like how it's reckless endangerment to shout FIRE in a crowded theater. Also why we have classified military secrets since letting the enemy know where the covert team is will get them all killed for sure.Your once and future Fanboy said:
The thing is that, flat out, the old adage that sticks and stones break my bones but words will never hurt me is WRONG. Stalkers don't ever have to touch their victims to ruin their lives. The same goes for any kind of harassment. It might not be directly physical damage but you're still causing harm to someone. Thus why you can be and SHOULD be charged with harassment if you do something like this, just like stalkers should be charged for their type of harassment. If someone called for the death of someone, say on the basis of being gay or because of their skin color, and then riled up a crowd and kept on this message until someone else killed the person, would you say that they shouldn't be charged with anything? To take this to an extreme, did Hitler ever do any of the killing in the camps? Does that mean that we should take everything negative out of the history books since all he did was make speeches?
i cant grasp why people think this is wrong, or that he should have not faced a punishment, what he did was a purely awful act, and i also dont see how you can try to say he should be protected by the notion of free speech? free speech is the right to voice opinions and ideas free from government censoring, what cros did was either of these, it was just emotionally assaulting a person (which has been considered a crime in the uk in certain situations)
id also like to point out that people in the uk do have freedom of speech, a good example being the BMP, a remarkably racist party who is allowed to say what they want, aslong as it doesnt go too far.
id also like to point out that people in the uk do have freedom of speech, a good example being the BMP, a remarkably racist party who is allowed to say what they want, aslong as it doesnt go too far.
That's actually one of the reasons I worry about making this sort of thing illegal. A lot of the difference of opinion here is the result of the US/UK divide, but it also works on a personal level. My own approach to forum moderation (and for the record, I'm not actually a forum mod here but I know a guy, if you know what I mean) is to let users work it out. Feelings get hurt, but that's life. Escapist mods, on the other hand, take a far more interventionist approach. Discourse may be more civil (or least, uncivil discourse may be less visible) but a LOT of people are excluded. That's fine for a forum but that "exclusion" in society - sending people to jail - is a lot more troubling.Anton P. Nym said:
Then again, I probably don't have as much faith in rational discourse as you do. If you start jailing people for being ignorant mount-breathers, you're gonna need to build a LOT more jails.
what do you mean by his mental state?
and i think this is a pretty clear case of emotionally assaulting a bereaved family as he has playing with there emotions and is making them suffer further just to amuse himself
and i think this is a pretty clear case of emotionally assaulting a bereaved family as he has playing with there emotions and is making them suffer further just to amuse himself
I think this sums up my opinion of the matter (as a Brit). I'm not going to pretend that I know the details of the situation of this or the law, although I believe that this sort of behaviour should be punished in some way.Andy Chalk said:
What does rile me is that there are plenty of people who commit more common and recognisable crimes like armed robbery or assault and get off with no jail term. Not even minor cases, but ones where serious harm has been caused and the perpetrators are the real scum of society.
I despair for our legal system sometimes, I really do.
I could say it's the person's cognitive condition at the time in question but lemme try it this way:jamiedf said:
Ever fucked up royally and had someone, like your parent, ask you, "What the Hell were you thinking!?" That's one way of asking you what was your mental state.
Seriously, learn about the english legal system before talking about it, you sound like an idiot.scott91575 said:
We go by seperation of powers; that is, the democratically elected goverment make bills, parliament (supposedly seperate) pass those bills by sending it between the House of Commons and the House of lords repeatedly until they both agree (at which point it is signed by the monarchy - that is someone acting on behalf of the queen, not the queen herself- and the law is then published, which is important as it doesn't count otherwise). The judiciary (also supposedly seperate from parliament and government) then apply those laws in court. The court has two divisions: criminal and civil.
