Internet troll sentenced to prison

[Tez3]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-11650593

At first sight it seems harsh to send someone to prison but then you think if one of your loved ones was the deceased would you want to read the stuff he put up? Though I think he deserves locking up for sheer stupidity too!

 

[girlbug2]

How sick and sad. Prison could only improve that kind of depraved mind.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Oh boy. I know I'm gonna get hated on for this...sigh.

I don't think the guy should be sent to prison. He's a jerk. Without question. However, no one has the right to not be offended. You send a person to prison for hurting someone's feelings? What's next?

The world is becoming increasingly small. More and more of us will come into contact with insensitive jerks and with people who actually get their jollies from inciting an emotional response by being horrible. If we start trying to legislate how people's actions make us feel, we're going down a road we won't like once we get down it aways.

 

[girlbug2]

I think this is going beyond emotions, and more into the territory of slander. But that's a legal distinction I'm not prepared to defend.

 

[Bruno@MT]

The world is becoming increasingly small. More and more of us will come into contact with insensitive jerks and with people who actually get their jollies from inciting an emotional response by being horrible. If we start trying to legislate how people's actions make us feel, we're going down a road we won't like once we get down it aways.

I see your point.
However, if the other person was bullying with the intent to do harm, that turns it into something else.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I think this is going beyond emotions, and more into the territory of slander. But that's a legal distinction I'm not prepared to defend.

People get sued for slander. That's tort law, not criminal (in most cases).

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I see your point.
However, if the other person was bullying with the intent to do harm, that turns it into something else.

In order to communicate a threat (a crime), a person has to take action that would reasonably make another person think that they intended to assault them, had the means to do so, and was about to. At least, as I understand it (IANAL). So if he was posting messages that said "I'm on my way over to your house to kick your butt right now," that might well be actionable behavior in the criminal sense. But to say "I had sex with your dead mother," not so much. Just gross, tacky, icky, bad, wrong, evil, etc. But not a threat.

 

[CoryKS]

Don't send him to prison, let 4chan have him.

 

[Tanaka]

I'm sure it is violating his right to free speech, but what he is doing could be causing harm. Just like those mothers who were talking trash about peoples daughters. Eventually the daughters had killed themselves. So it is really hard to determine fitting punishment or if there shouldn't be any legal punishment at all. But what he is doing could drive someone to the point of such much mental anguish that they too might kill themselves. Because death of the love ones is a lot worse, than the basic American high school drama.
I am glad I do not have to make these decisions.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I'm sure it is violating his right to free speech, but what he is doing could be causing harm.

Define 'causing harm'.

Generally speaking, freedom of speech is limited only to speech that directly infringes on the rights of another or represents a definable threat to the safety of others (in the USA, which this case isn't).

What he is doing causes 'harm' by hurting people's feelings. Like so-called 'hate speech' on AM talk radio. Shall we send Rush Limbaugh to prison? How about the liberal radio talk show host who recently wished a female GOP death and eternal damnation?

Just like those mothers who were talking trash about peoples daughters. Eventually the daughters had killed themselves. So it is really hard to determine fitting punishment or if there shouldn't be any legal punishment at all. But what he is doing could drive someone to the point of such much mental anguish that they too might kill themselves. Because death of the love ones is a lot worse, than the basic American high school drama.
I am glad I do not have to make these decisions.

Here in Michigan, we recently had a Facebook fight between two mothers that escalated into a case of road rage in which a completely innocent person was murdered. However, we punish people criminally for what they do, not what they say.

The point is that except for certain situations, which are rare and pretty much face-to-face (fighting words and inciting to riot, etc), one is responsible for one's own actions. If I call you names and make you feel badly about yourself and you do yourself in, one could say I 'made' you do that. But the law does not see it that way. You were not forced to do yourself in by anything I said. If I call you names until you come over to my house and shoot me dead, same thing; I didn't 'make' you shoot me. But people speak that way, and often they think that way too. He 'made me do it'. The law doesn't generally agree with that, although it can be an extenuating circumstance.

 

[Tez3]

Firstly, not everything he wrote has been quoted as it was obscene, it was also malicious meaning it was done with the intent to threaten and distress. It's not a case of 'feelings being hurt' it was a case of gross obscenity where children can read it plus threatening and malicious comments.
It comes under the same laws as posting and receiving child pornography online and as you will have read he was posting on the account for a child who had been killed, one of the things he was saying was that he had sex with the dead body, I don't suggest you think too much about the rest.
This may help explain the charges and the sentencing.


127Improper use of public electronic communications network (1)A person is guilty of an offence if he—

(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or
(b)causes any such message or matter to be so sent.
(2)A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—
(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false,
(b)causes such a message to be sent; or
(c)persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.
(3)A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both.
(4)Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to anything done in the course of providing a programme service (within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (c. 42)).

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Firstly, not everything he wrote has been quoted as it was obscene, it was also malicious meaning it was done with the intent to threaten and distress. It's not a case of 'feelings being hurt' it was a case of gross obscenity where children can read it plus threatening and malicious comments.
It comes under the same laws as posting and receiving child pornography online and as you will have read he was posting on the account for a child who had been killed, one of the things he was saying was that he had sex with the dead body, I don't suggest you think too much about the rest.
This may help explain the charges and the sentencing.

I understand. Based on what you're saying, he was arrested not for 'being a troll' but for stating obscenities. Fair enough.

As to the 'child pornography' laws, I suspect that there is a difference between stating a fiction regarding some awful thing about a child and doing it, photographing it, planning it, etc. Otherwise, books like "Lolita" would be illegal child pornography. Laws on child pornography may well be different in the UK than they are in the US. One wishes to protect children of course, that's a given. However, fictional accounts strike me as not being damaging to a real person; especially a deceased one. It's terrible behavior, but I'm having trouble seeing it as violating child porn laws.

 

[Tez3]

I understand. Based on what you're saying, he was arrested not for 'being a troll' but for stating obscenities. Fair enough.

As to the 'child pornography' laws, I suspect that there is a difference between stating a fiction regarding some awful thing about a child and doing it, photographing it, planning it, etc. Otherwise, books like "Lolita" would be illegal child pornography. Laws on child pornography may well be different in the UK than they are in the US. One wishes to protect children of course, that's a given. However, fictional accounts strike me as not being damaging to a real person; especially a deceased one. It's terrible behavior, but I'm having trouble seeing it as violating child porn laws.

I don't think I can have explained this well.

He was charged with making malicious communications. The pornographic content and threats were made with the intent of causing distress. If I phoned a local undertaker to go to a house telling them a family member had died when they hadn't this would be making a malicious communication over a public network. If I posted up on here a pornographic account of sex with your dead child, that is a malicious communication. Something people have to be wary about when using websites etc here. If you like, it's a form of verbal assault, it's a modern version of those malicious 'dirty' phone calls, making them is illegal, posting them up on Facebook is the more modern equivilant.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

That makes a lot more sense - thanks! Can't disagree with that.

 

[Tez3]

That makes a lot more sense - thanks! Can't disagree with that.

Ta, I find it hard sometimes to put over the actual working of our laws, it's easy to quote the words but harder to describe the spirit of the law which is an important concept here. Reading this its seems we have a difference too on how we look at it.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/13/messages/696.html

 

[Blade96]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-11650593

People get sued for slander. That's tort law, not criminal (in most cases).

Then somebody sue the bugger. If not prison then something. That aint right. Just like when phelps and his evil family got sued for using people's funerals to spread their programs.

 

[Tez3]

Then somebody sue the bugger. If not prison then something. That aint right. Just like when phelps and his evil family got sued for using people's funerals to spread their programs.

It is neither slander (spoken) or libel (written) it is a criminal offence to do do what he has. As I explained before if you receive one of those phone calls in your home where someone says disgusting things to you, that's an offence, if you receive a letter containing obscenities that's an offence, it you receive a text message or a fax containing the same, its an offence. It is maliciously using public communication networks to cause distress, upset and fear, that makes it criminal.

Another example is if I called you names on here or said you were a thief, you can call sue me for libel. If, however I post up or send you a PM containing nasty pornographic, violent or otherwise upsetting images, or I threaten you or say anything I know will cause you distress or to fear for your safety you can report it to the police. It has to be done maliciously to be a crime. We have had the police investigate a poster on an MMA site I use who posted up threats against someone, they were actually quite nasty involving that person's children. The police didn't charge them but the poster was given an official police warning for it. The internet isn't considered to be out of the jurisdiction of the law here.

It isn't the same as anything written on hard copy that's a different issue, this is using public networks ie telephone, internet, radio maliciously. It can also mean making fake or prank calls to the emergency services.

 

[Stac3y]

Graphic descriptions of sex with children (alive or dead) are considered child pornography in the U.S. also, I believe.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Graphic descriptions of sex with children (alive or dead) are considered child pornography in the U.S. also, I believe.

I am not a lawyer, but I don't think so. Graphic depictions, yes. Descriptions, no.

 

[Stac3y]

I am not a lawyer, but I don't think so. Graphic depictions, yes. Descriptions, no.

You are correct. Visual depictions only, but they don't have to be graphic, necessarily. My bad.