Arrests for 'offensive' Twitter and Facebook messages up by a third

Re: Power Mad

but of course saying "I'm going to come round your house and rape your mom and kill your kids", be it via social media, text or post, should be stamped on hard.

It's also a question of context.

"I'm going to kill you", could be a genuine death threat, or someone who's just had a round the world trip and a huge party given to them for their 60th, despite asking for no fuss.

Not just yours, lock 'em all up over the bollocks they've been saying every day during the EU referendum campaign.

Re: Nothing new

Was he Scottish?

Re: Nothing new

'4 months prison for singing a song'

Aye, just singing a harmless wee sectarian song,

I take it you've never been on a bus or a train where some idiot starts singing 'The Sash' or 'Billy Boys' or 'Athenry' or 'Ibrox Disaster' with the sole intention of causing trouble and it kicks off?

I take it you've never been punched for being a 'fenian cunt' (and I'm not a Catholic) just because some shithead decided to 'sing a song' and you happened to be in the vicinity?

From the article you link to

'..Simply for singing this lewd tune which for decades has formed part of the stadium-based, mostly harmless wind-ups between Rangers and Celtic fans, '

Oh sure, such songs are just lewd and a 'mostly harmless wind-up', I missed the fact that getting punched in the face as I sat on a public bus minding my own business was both 'mostly harmless' and merely part of a 'wind-up', oh, wait, maybe it's only a 'mostly harmless wind-up' when sectarian songs are sung in a stadium...

These songs have 'baggage', they're not just harmless 'banter' or 'folk songs' as some apologists would have it.

For the record, I'm an atheist, my mother was a Catholic from a 'mixed' family (Catholic & Protestant) and my father was an atheist from a Protestant family, so I have relatives and bigots on both sides. The Bigotry isn't just 'about football', that's just a surface manifestation of something which runs a lot deeper. It saddens me to say that I have Bigots for relatives who are quite happy to call my 2 year old great nephew 'a wee Orange bastard' and his mother, my niece, 'a Fenian whore' and truly mean it, such is life in some parts of 21st century Scotland.

Re: Freedom of speech is dead in the UK

But if it's not banned then I may get triggered in my safe-space.

Re: Freedom of speech is dead in the UK

Freedom of speech without the freedom to offend is worthless.

Not worthless. Just nonexistent: it simply isn't free speech.

Je suis some-poor-bugger-probably-not-called-Charlie. 'Cos Charlie Hebdo published things far more offensive than I (or I expect many of those arrested) ever would, but got all the sanctimonious hypocrites lining up to support it.

My personal view? I'm with Voltaire: I support the right to say despicable things. I may also despise those who gratuitously abuse that right, but that doesn't mean sending the heavies after them.

Re: Freedom of speech is dead in the UK

Freedom of speech without the freedom to offend is worthless.

Perhaps so... but offending someone is one thing, actively abusing or threatening them are entirely different.

I might, for example, describe someone online as being a prize twat, and they might well be offended. It would, I think, be quite different to say "I know where your wife works..." or "I follow your kids when they leave school..." with an implicit (or even explicit) threat tagged on.

Being offensive "just because you can" is pretty dishonest anyway; doing it anonymously is at best cowardly and, IMHO, rather dishonourable.

Re: Freedom of speech is dead in the UK

Freedom of speech is not the same as a freedom to threaten. Threatening to rape someone with a pair of scissors, after previously announcing the address of the person being threatened, is not covered by freedom of speech and is not just about offence. You'd be arrested for that threat on the street so why not online?

Exactlyness!

Context, give us the context so we can all see what a saddo these people are, or aren't, then let their online peers dole out the punishment, if required. There should be a clear link from perp's picture and it's doings online, all seachable (redacted for the necessary bits) so the world can see what a turd looks like. Then auto-link to every new instance of social medias that they connect to. I think if we got to see these message it would be more transparent than us having to go search on the scraper sites for the deleted messages. All we need is: 1) sites these creeps use and their login IDs there, 2) the offending posts cleaned up for public consumption, 3) an unflattering pic of said creep, 4) a method to store and forward their past offenses to future social media sites. Not easy, but that's my solution in a nutshell. A clearing house for trolls, if you will. Shine the light into their hidy-holes, and watch the rats scramble!

Let's face it, most folks are pretty decent online, but a few assholes like to make trouble and ruin it for all others because of the sweet anonymity that the Internet affords them, and they have nothing else in life to busy them creatively. Just like the stupid assholes who deface and destroy public places, they should be taken out back of the ranger's shed and beaten until they crap themselves, because they deserve it. Nothing wrong with that.

Re: 4chan.

You're so out of the loop there buddy.

4chan was neutered when moot got cuckolded by a social justice warrior. Then moot sold the whole thing, and now it has delusions of becoming the chan version of reddit.

The 4chan diaspora dispersed to various different sites, but it's certain that they'll never be as high a concentration of lulz ever again. End of an era.

Re: Please don't tell the Metropolitan Police about 4chan.

Please don't tell the Metropolitan Police about 4chan...

Oh, come on, have you never wondered who was really behind those 'reporting in' threads on /b/ where the less than clueful were invited to put up their postcodes?

Re: Please don't tell the Metropolitan Police about 4chan.

I knew it! The Register is full of oldfags.

Re: Act 127 does not apply to women apparently

And I can prove it!

We know that corporations are legally people. We also know that it is appropriate to use "it" to refer to a corporation.

Therefore, any legal document would use "it" whenever it doesn't mean to be gender specific.

And consequently, the "he" in the act can only be interpreted to mean men.

QED.

Re: Act 127 does not apply to women apparently

It does. (UK) Interpretation Act 1978 provides that

"In any Act, unless the contrary intention appears,—

(a)words importing the masculine gender include the feminine;

(b)words importing the feminine gender include the masculine;

(c)words in the singular include the plural and words in the plural include the singular".

And I assume there will be equivalents elsewhere.