Free speech or hate speech?
 

A man has been jailed for sending offensive tweets about the murdered British RE teacher. Obviously distasteful, offensive and stupid but in a free society should we be criminalizing such behaviour? The police let him get away with a history of racist and anti-religious ramblings before this incident but posting tweets about a teacher's murder was deemed so offensive to the public that they decided to act and the local magistrate thought that his comments was so egregious that an eight week custodial sentence needed to be imposed.

Is this the just behaviour of a free democratic society? Should the majority regulate the speech of others if they disagree with them? Do you have the right to not to be offended? If so, how far can society take this?

Personally I find this all very troubling, its reason the UK should have a written Bill of Rights where the freedom of speech, given the obvious caveats, should be absolute. The UK worries me, they did away with the right of self-incrimination and now they're looking at double jeopardy. Its the over reaching of the state in the name of public protection that is becoming concerning. Why aren't the British people protesting vigorously about this? Is it just complacency? Will they only come out on the streets to protest about tax increases?


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ght-weeks.html

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Pleased he's been put in jail. I don't think free speech extends to making repeated threats to kill specific people, especially in a public forum. It's intimidation and hate mongering. His jail sentence is very short, it's a simple reminder that society is unimpressed. Can't do the time, don't do the crime.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

It does sound like there's a threat element to it, ie not just exercising free speech.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Free speech is the freedom to follow whatever god u like or team or say things about yourself that u believe. It's Not freedom to threaten or abuse others.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Making threats is not freedom of speech. You would be arrested in the US for the same thing. There are some very worrying developments in terms of free speech in the UK but this is not one of them. In any case Britain had a Bill of Rights a hundred years before the United States.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

We either have free speech or we dont. You cannot say "free speech as long as you dont offend the majority".

Causing offense is not sufficient reason to restrict the right to free speech ("true" free speech) in my opinion.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Restricting freedom of speech because it will "cause offence" is definitely not a valid reason. But there's a very important distinction to be made between saying something offensive and making a threat against an individual.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Quite. There's a substantive difference between saying "I wish you were dead" and "I'm going to kill you." The former is unpleasant but acceptable, the latter is equally unpleasant, but constitutes a threat.

The right of an individual to express their opinion does not, and should not, trump the right of another individual to live without fear or threat of violence. That, imo, is a more fundamental right that should always take precendence over some numpty's "right" to tweet out drivel on social media.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

IMO Its really only a short step between that and the outragous saudi arabia jailing (and sentencing to 1000 lashes) of a liberal blogger.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27318400

However I only skimmed the piece in the mail, and it didnt seem to spell out exactly what the twit tweeted.


Free speech comes at a price. The price is that people will sometimes say things you dont necessarily want to hear. Its a small price to pay.

However, freedom of speech should never be a viable defense if charged under the laws that deal with threatening and intimidating behaviour, but there are (or should be) laws that address that seperately.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Huh? :confused:

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

There was no specific and immediate threat. As the magistrate said, his so-called crime was that, "'The offensive messages outraged the public. You had complete disregard for the tragic death of Ann Maguire."

The offence here is to the concept of freedom of expression. The general ramblings about a desire to see harm done a general group is not a specific and immediate threat. This is simply the cynicism of the government pandering to the impulsive passions of the populace.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

True- but he wasnt jailed for making threats, he was jailed for causing offense. He made no direct threats against anyone, and remember, it was done via twitter and aimed at no one in particular (unless I've missed someting- i've not actually read any of his tweets apart from those mentioned in the article).

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

According to the DM (Lordy, Lordy, Lordy) he tweeted "he would kill all the ----- teachers"...which sounds like a threat to me. It identifies a group.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

In the past tense, its not immediate and thus not a threat.

Isn't that expression offensive and racist?

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Replace teachers with a countries/religions name...

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Neither should be jailed.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Certainly the Saudi Arabian man should not be jailed, he should be given a medal!

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

But you cant have it both ways. Thats the rub with freedom of speech.

At this point most frothing D-M readers are probably wondering why the magistrate didnt have the poor twit flogged too...

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

I don't think it's having it both ways. It's the content which differentiates the speech. The problem here (for commentators) is that we don't know exactly what was tweeted.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

The judge did, and he was jailed for being offensive, not for making threats.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Speech is either free or its not. If you are going to make legal judgments based on the offensiveness of the content, then its not free. Im sure some Saudi observers find Raif Badawis comments offensive to their strict muslim sensibilities after all.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Fine. We don't need it to be completely free.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

I may be wrong but it seems like you are saying. That if you agree with someones point then they have the right to express it. if not, porridge.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

As long as people dont deem your comments to be offensive though, right?

And then who gets to decide on what is/isnt offensive?

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

You have to differentiate between offensive comments and threats. The Westboro Baptist Church make offensive comments, but they don't make threats. As soon as you say "I" or "We" are going to kill, it becomes a threat. Such threats intimidate people and are crimes.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

We’re agreed on that, but he didn’t threaten to kill anyone.
He said “I’d have killed them all”. Past tense. Hypothetical.
It’s not the same as “I’m going to kill them all”.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Is that the exact tweet? Where did you see it reported?

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

I think it's all quite alarming.

We are now deemed capable of being offended by people we may never have met posting things we may never have read.

Don't get me wrong, only a fool would put into print some of the more outrageous comments we all make from time to time, but showing yourself up to be a fool should not be a criminal offence.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

But 100 years before the US bill of rights was ratified which was 1791, the US was not an independent country.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Granted but my point was that we already have one. The US copied Britain in this respect, we don't need to copy them.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

One prime example of that is this American basketball owner who is now being vilified for his alleged racist comments made in private. I disagree with what he said/thought, but it's a bit scary how the NBA and US media suddenly start acting like Orwellian thought police and crush the guy.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

I disagree, the NBA and the media are private organisations who deal with the guy (Donald Sterling). He has to face the public and commercial response to his opinions, whether intended or not.

The law is quite different. Sterling, as far as I am aware, has not been charged or convicted of any criminal offence in relation to his comments.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

I agree with what you say, but I think that the response is an over reaction. A mob reaction.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Yes, but he doesn't have some overly entitled magistrate locking him away in prison because he doesn't like what he said.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Why would he, he made a silly comment about celebrity photo ops, not a threat to personally kill certain teachers. The devil is in the detail.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

You're obviously being obtuse to protect your initial rubbish position so I don't think were going to get nowhere. ;) :rofl:

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Yes, Mr Pot!

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

This thread reminds me of one of my favourite quotes:

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

Okay, the full tweet has now been published (as opposed to the snippet in the DM).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...s-9339314.html

On reading the full tweet and see that it is simply offensive language and not a threat (in the DM he appeared to me to be saying he would "kill all the black teachers").

That being the case, the judge seems to have overstepped the mark in applying a custodial sentence. Nevertheless, it's not something I will lose any sleep over as it will probably do him some good.

Re: Free speech or hate speech?
 

It seems he was charged with a very specific offence, of sending a grossly offensive message, under the Communications Act 2003. This is an example of statute law taking precedence over any woolly notion of free speech under Common Law. I always understood that the UK does not, in fact, have any guarantees of free speech; there are numerous instances where what you say, whether in person, on the phone, in print or via electronic media, can be per se in breach of the law.
The CPS public website has some pretty clear guidance on what constitutes an offence under this law, how prosecutions should be handles, and what penalties (including imprisonment) can be sought. The law itself is here http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127 and the CPS guidance is here http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/c...offences/#an12