Trolling, Free Speech and the Law

Hmm... Personally, I'm not sure what to think about this. Who decides what "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" is? Is it calling a flat-young-earth creationist an idiot? Is it calling some random dictator who decides to bomb his own cities a complete monster?
On the other hand, I wholeheartedly agree that cyber-bullying should be brought to a halt ASAP.

Maybe add an addendum that single spur-of-the-moment messages brought forth by emotion can be excused? At least that way you stop victims of hatecrimes (or people who know victims) being jailed themselves for a rant they put on the webs in a rage.

This is starting to return to the "Right to be Assholes" argument.

While everyone is probably going to agree that polite behaviour is prefered, can we deal with being Tyrants of Politeness?

Burn witches/spammers at the stake?

Note about harassment: To me, this concept includes a notion of duration. To reuse R Taco's concept, calling a Nazi a terrible person every minute for two hours or once every day for months constitutes harassment (and "he deserves it", even when true, doesn't constitute a valid defense because that's vigilantism).

edited 28th Mar '12 3:17:17 AM by Medinoc

So in other words, it's not so much the exact wording or the target, but the duration thereof? That I can understand. As said before, at least that will filter out onetimers that are purely born out of emotion, while still allowing you to punish systematic bullying/harrasment/what have you.

edited 28th Mar '12 6:20:05 AM by neobullseye

At the risk of a derail, I would gleefully support burning spammers at the stake. I would volunteer to pour gasoline on them myself.

On point, there is ample psychological research to indicate that patterns of verbal abuse and harassment do cause major and lasting harm, especially when directed at young people.

edited 28th Mar '12 6:32:55 AM by Fighteer

True. It's true that people have been seriously damaged by nothing but words. That, however, tends to be the result of long-time verbal/psychological abuse. This law, if I read it right, wants to punish you for saying something bad even once, which would include emotional outbursts. That's my main problem with this thing.

EDIT: Note that I would be very glad if digital bullying/abuse would be made illegal. However, there has to be a line between someone either making a joke or just being emotional and someone actively trying to harm someone else.

edited 28th Mar '12 6:47:24 AM by neobullseye

Honestly I'm sure that's the cases. But I still don't think government should have right to lock people up for being assholes on principle.

edited 28th Mar '12 7:15:02 AM by joeyjojo

There is a school of thought that being an asshole should be subject to immediate punishment — that is, being executed on the spot by one's peers.

Yeah, but the whole Gentlemen with Pistols at Dawn thing is now out of fashion.

And illegal I think.

I agree that punishment (a MEASURED and sensible punishment) would probably be needed to curb the worst Troll behaviour, the problem is even we could agree to what it would be, I have a hard time imagining how to impliment it.

The Net offers annonymity after all, one of its more Double Edged qualities.

We'd have to go Big Brother and monitor all communications, verbal, written, digtal, to be able to make sure every one is Polite and Politically Correct.

edited 28th Mar '12 7:02:27 AM by Natasel

I'd just like to say, re: Words versus being stoned for two hours, is that one of the worst parts of being stoned is the concept of it, the idea that these people hate you enough to throw stones at you. The words behind the stones hurt more than the stones do, and if you survive, it's not gonna be the sting of the rocks you'll remember, but the idea of the event. ..I mean, yeah, you'll still remember the rocks. But the idea of the event will stick with you and hurt you for years.

While I haven't been stoned for two hours straight, I know very much what the principle of this is.

What can and can't you say on Twitter? A rather nice exploration of this topic, including other issues like incitements to riot and threatening messages.

On pondering this I've concluded that words are not as deadly as sticks and stones - they're far more so. Words drive countries into war, cause a group of friends to turn against and murder one of their own, burn 'witches' and create rationales for persecuting the vulnerable. Words organise the wielders of sticks and stones and dictate who they attack.

Much of this conclusion came from the linked article and the ability of people to incite riots or terrorism. That is one of the most significant dangers of free speech, of people to transcend namecalling trollishness and become genuine incitement dangers.

Free speech is awesome and crucial, but it must have its limits.

(Edit) Granted, the actual phrase ends with "words will never hurt me." Well, I can think of a few names that have condemned people to death too.

edited 28th Mar '12 2:57:24 PM by betaalpha

Pity it did, IMO.

Couldn't have said it better.

I've done that quite a few times, by the way, but it was always Gentlemen with Fists Right Now. Works pretty well, though, and no chance of a homicide charge. It also works better with Fits, Elbows, Knees, Feet and Forehead.

The last sentence - right, like if you pronounce Shibboleth wrong or something.

edited 28th Mar '12 7:25:42 PM by Martello

betaalpha: First off, there's nothing you've said about words that doesn't apply for say, sign language. All you've done is listed things that can happen if you communicate. That's indirect, not direct. If you like, I can argue that thought is far more dangerous, along the same lines.

Secondly, "Free speech is awesome and crucial. But it must have its limits."

Call me old-fashioned...but if it has limits, it's not free, no?

I agree that systematic and long-term harassment should be illegal. But it ends there.

edited 28th Mar '12 9:01:03 PM by Ultrayellow

Agreed, it's not like was liam stacey was directly contacting Fabrice Muamba by mail or phone. Fabrice muamba most likely never read the tweets being busy fighting for his life at the time.

The footballer was in no way harmed by the tweets. The judicial system is just pandering to the public's outrage.

I'd just like to say that free speech was never actually free, and I wish we'd never began calling it such a misleading term in the first place.

And what about the other Twitter users he insulted? From what I can tell, what happened was that he wrote a post basically laughing at Muamba, other users told him he was out of order, and he responded to them with racist comments. I'd say that counts as direct.

edited 28th Mar '12 11:08:44 PM by ArlaGrey

I think when it comes to freedom of speech, one should be free to insult me viciously to my face, and I should be free to disagree with their assessment with my fist.

Or essentially, best way to get people to think before they speak is have concrete consequences. You call someone racial epithets in a bar, you get beaten. The internet really should have a similar method of enforcing the Dickhead Line. The line that if crossed means one is in trouble.

That's impossible without removing internet anonymity. People... do not take kindly to attempts to do that.

On the topic of free speech, I should point out that people can and have lost their life's savings and their houses because of bank runs caused by random rumors, especially with today's ease of spreading information.

edited 28th Mar '12 11:26:05 PM by IraTheSquire

Ultrayellow - my last rant was powered by three delicious pints of stout - hope it was entertaining :) A fair bit of it was a bit 'well, duh!' and indeed any communications could be just as dangerous.

If your interpretation of free speech is an absolute that must be totally unconstrained or it loses its meaning, yes. It's probably just semantics but I think it's okay to call controlled free speech free speech. You may prefer semi-free speech. Free speech lite. Freeish speech :)

Anyways, as D-Jay says, even the US has, umm, freeish speech. So no inciting riots or terrorism, slander or persecution for you!

Mark Von Lewis - 'tis true, people act like assholes on the 'net precisely because there are less fist-in-mouth consequences. And that's why I'm glad the law is stepping up to this.

Meanwhile, the Sonichu debacle is a pretty good case study. Chris Chan was pretty loathsome but the community of trolls that grew up around him has become self-sustaining and is still stalking him, his friends and family years after their victim stopped posting comics, videos or pretty much anything online. What they're doing is borderline illegal and, frankly, horrible.

Agreed with all. Except I probably wouldn't call it borderline illegal, but probably just straight up illegal yet hard to convict.

Free speech is a right. Rights can be taken away from you if you abuse them.

You have the right to bear arms. You lose the right to bear arms if you go around shooting people.

You have the right of free speech. You lose the right of free speech if you go around harshly attacking people in a way that violates their rights.

It's worth remembering, in light of Mark's post up there, that 1) the US Constitution says that the government can't limit speech. It nowhere promises freedom from consequences of speech that are imposed by other people. And 2) that when the Constitution and Bill of Rights was written, dueling was still legal. If you said something that someone else found sufficiently offensive, you could well find yourself in a pistols-for-two, breakfast-for-one scenario. The teeth have largely been removed from the ability of an individual to impose consequences, but they've been replaced with legal recourse.

edited 29th Mar '12 7:06:55 AM by Madrugada

Of course, those particular cases were in Britain, not the US, so their Constitution doesn't apply here...