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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Huh?

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.

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).

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.

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

Isn't that expression offensive and racist?

Replace teachers with a countries/religions name...