UK man gets 18 week prison sentence for trolling

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-14894576

Basically, a teenager who was being bullied was Driven to Suicide. Over Facebook and Youtube, a man trolled the remembrance pages set up by her friends. He'd also done it with a few other girls in similar circumstances.

For this, he's been jailed for 18 weeks and banned from social networking sites for 5 years.

I'm aware there's overlap with the hate speech thread, but this is a specific case and about a related but separate issue. The guy was being a dick, that's beyond question. But prison? Really? That seems far too much here. At most, he should be banned from those two sites by the sites themselves, the courts have no place here that I can see.

If you ask me, no, the fact he did it in Internet doesn't make it less worse than if he had done it in real life.

How are they going to enforce that?

ISP monitoring of some kind, I assume. They're bound by court rulings after all. I imagine he can get around it easily enough, but they will at least put some effort into enforcing it.

Slave Britannia strikes again!

I agree, Cassius: this is tragicomic "justice".

I think the problem for enforcing this is no one knows quite how to police bad behavior over the internet just yet. Though this will set an.... interesting precedent. I'm assuming this guy is going to try and appeal this ruling.

I must admit there's a small part of me going "ha hah, jackass got what he deserved." He was behaving like a jerk.

I don't find having miserable life as excuse to vent out at teenage girls who have died, so I don't have any sympathy for the guy.

It amazes me that out of 100 people quoting my name in reply to a post on any website, at least 97 will misspell it despite it being right in front of them.

and Behaving like a jerk is NOT a criminal offence. He deserves to be told to fuck off by the others on the boards he was trolling, and nothing more. It's a horrendous precedent to set, your life being ruined forever (that record is a permanent blackmark against his name after all) because of a few dick comments online.

edited 13th Sep '11 10:56:57 AM by CaissasDeathAngel

Wait... what was the crime again?

Expected reaction: Nobody not involved in meatspace giving a fuck. More trolls harassing the family.

edited 10th Jan '13 9:47:55 AM by JosefBugman

Have you any idea whatsoever slippery that slope is? Posting a few dick comments on a message board is definitely not the same as harassing someone in real life, and it's insulting to claim otherwise.

Does the law not apply online now then?

And why is it a "dangerous precendent to set"? And it wasn't "a few dick comments" he had been doing this to an apparently rather large amount of people whose family members had just died. You'll forgive me for not being exactly on his side here I trust?

edited 13th Sep '11 11:07:43 AM by JosefBugman

I am pretty sure harassment does not work like that.

This is like claiming the guy who laughs at suicide memorials is harassing the family of the dead.

Harassment is subject to legal action, and it doesn't stop being harassment simply because it's done online rather than in person, via snail mail, or over the phone. This was harassment.

He is when he's laughing at them in full view of the family, and has done it multiple times.

4 is not a rather large number, that's hyperbolic.

As for the law not applying online, the international nature of the internet has always made that a murky issue. Harassment and the harm it causes are much more easily evidenced and demonstrable in real life. It's a dangerous precedent to set because much of 4chan and SA are breaking the law pretty much by existing if trolling becomes a crime, as are a sizable minority of comments on message boards generally. I wager there are much, much worse people/comments than his going around that are considered perfectly legal.

Someone has had a temper tantrum about this, and that's why he's in prison. I don't like the guy, I don't approve of his actions in the slightest, but this is not justice in the slightest, it's Disproportionate Retribution, pure and simple.

The difference is if it causes damage to the people directly involved. The idea is more that you can talk about it, and even make jokes about it, but you can't do so in front of people who will actually be offended by it. We can't regulate what people discuss IRL behind closed doors, because the other people may not hear it. But to do so in public (and on the internet where the recipients are definetly going to see) is a very different matter.

So your saying "there are worse people out there", which is an Appeal to Worse Problems essentially.

And its also because his lawyer didn't convince a jury of his peers to find him innocent of harrasing the family. The judge may have been too harsh, I really can't say, but he was certainly guilty of harrasment.

edited 13th Sep '11 11:17:15 AM by JosefBugman

Harassment of the kind that warranted perhaps a ban from FB and Youtube. There is no reason whatsoever for the courts to get involved with a simple troll, they're a dime a dozen after all. Real crimes are being committed and I really think that magistrates should be dealing with them, while the internal rules of the websites in question (which certainly ban trolling) did their job.

So your still appealing to the fact that "theres worse out there!" in essence?

And its not "trolling" its "harrasment". It's a crime. Now if you want to argue that harrasment doesn't apply here (either because its the internet or because you have some other reason) I am more than happy to hear it.

Facebook and You Tube videos, if they're set to allow open commenting, don't strike me as the same as going up to a person and saying incredibly rude stuff. By making those publically viewable pages open for public commenting, you're basically inviting anyone and everyone who sees the page to tell you what they think.

Some random person crashing a funeral to badmouth the deceased? Wrong. A funeral that invites everyone to say a few words, and one person uses their chance to speak to badmouth the deceased? Not wrong.

Uh, no, I'm asking you to tell me one reason why the courts should be involved, or what they could do that the internal policing of the sites themselves couldn't. A court-ordered ban on this guy going to social networking sites is a meaningless gesture and essentially unenforceable; nothing to stop, or wrong with, the sites themselves telling him to fuck off if he turns up though. He's broken their rules? Fine, ban him. That's how websites work. And that's enough.

Our prisons are full enough as it is, what good will this sentence serve exactly? It's all so very pointless. Again, I don't defend his actions, I think he's in all likelihood a despicable person. I just don't see anything constructive from a court case, anymore than we should be prosecuting the likes of Ilmurov or Antbas for harassing here with endless ban-evading. I'm not appealing to worseness, I'm contextualising the lack of benefit in taking it as far as it was here.

edited 13th Sep '11 11:30:09 AM by CaissasDeathAngel

There's a difference between trolling in general and trolling funerals, Caissas. The latter are a very small niche that would have no meaningful effect on the prison population. There's no need whatsoever to conflate the two.

And no, I don't think this will lead to a slippery slope any more than I think treating Westboro Baptist Church as they deserve would lead to the death of all free speech.

Because the parents brought a case against him and had evidence enough to convince the crown to step in?

And its only 18 weeks, it seems more likely to be a community order. It also allows people to stop trolling by threatening "suit" essentially.

I didn't mention funerals though? This was a few posts of remembrance online, and I see no difference there between any other thread types. Raven Wilder compared it to actual funerals.

It's prison, not a community order though. Even that would have been excessive, the courts are playing gesture politck for no reason here.

edited 13th Sep '11 11:34:19 AM by CaissasDeathAngel

The troll commited great dishonour in trolling that funeral but a prision sentance... is uncalled for.

This figure gains punishment by the dreadful reputation he just bought up to himself. Prision sentances like this could be used for... abusive messures.