Insult Person On Twitter, Go To JailChris | InformationLiberationJul. 31, 2012 |
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A teenager insulted a public figure on twitter. Then he got arrested. Why? Because in the U.K., it's a "criminal offense" to tweet messages that are considered "menacing, offensive, or indecent." Via The Independent: A 17-year-old boy has been arrested over a string of malicious tweets he allegedly sent to the teenage diver Tom Daley over his failure to win an Olympic medal in a case that has raised fresh questions over the policing of comments on social media.Note, due to social pressure, the teen apologized and changed his tune. That's how normal human interactions are supposed to take place. Why do the guns of government and fines and jail time need to come into the mix? Of course, what constitutes "menacing," "offensive," or "indecent" speech is entirely up to the arbitrary whims of the state, earlier this year a 19-year-old U.K student was arrested for posting an antiwar comment to Facebook. I repeat, he was arrested for posting an antiwar comment to Facebook. There was little to no outrage over the incident, the student was just one of many arrested for "offensive" speech in the U.K. What's funny about laws like these is if it was actually applied efficiently and universally, it would result in the jailing of half or more of the populace. We're on our way there here in the U.S., with some 800,000 "regulations" on the books and 40,000 new laws being passed every year, 1 out of every 32 Americans is either in jail now or on parole, and 1 out of 3 young people are arrested at least once by the age of 23. _ Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here. |