Manchester's Self-Described 'Internet Troll' Jailed For Offensive Web Posts 321
noob22 writes "According to BBC Online, 'An "internet troll" who posted obscene messages on Facebook sites set up in memory of dead people has been jailed. Colm Coss, of Ardwick, Manchester, posted on a memorial page for Big Brother star Jade Goody and a tribute site to John Paul Massey, a Liverpool boy mauled to death by a dog. The 36-year-old "preyed on bereaved families" for his "own pleasure," Manchester Magistrates Court heard.'" My favorite line: "Unemployed Coss was only caught when he sent residents on his street photos of himself saying he was an internet 'troll.'"
I have met men. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So he was done on a technicality? (Score:2, Interesting)
Thus it really depends on the threshold of "being a dick" for a law to be established. In my opinion this kind of behavior of the man in the story is atrocious and no one should be allowed to behave in such a manner without some punishment.
Why would you think like that? (Score:2, Interesting)
There are several reasons why "free speech" is important. One of the primary ones is that it allows people to criticize the society/government/etc. which is very important part of the democratic system. Another common one is that it is a human right to freely express yourself (creating whatever type of art, shouting out your sexual identity, whatever) without being restricted by laws. Actually, in most of Europe the constitutions are based on these two concepts. For example, finnish constitution [finlex.fi] states that you have (among other things): Freedom of religion and conscience (Section 11), Freedom of expression and the right of access to information (Section 12), Freedom of assembly and freedom of assosciation (Section 13) and so on.
Now... Free speech means that people who disagree with you also have free speech. Think that Hitler was a great fellow? Go ahead, blog about that. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. If you really think that way, nobody should have the right to jail you for your opinions (or for expressing them).
But if you want to go to a funeral of someone you don't even know and shout obscenities simply because you enjoy causing sorrow to other people? With no other motivation (Such as political reasons for protesting outside a public figure's funeral) involved? I am more than happy to let the cops drag you away. I do not think that there is any reason why such activities should have constitutional protection (and on this side of the ocean, they don't). Now, there is always gray area: You think that it is art to mess with the feelings of other people? Well, in those cases I would be fine with everything from stating "Well... Fine, them." to declaring that as a crime against humanity. But in a case like this, there really wasn't any excuse.
Re:They jail for this in Europe now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes I wonder if "gold spammers" are not only spamming gold, but a digital version of a Numbers station. [wikipedia.org].
Re:They jail for this in Europe now? (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean scale of how the Albanians, Bulgarians, Armenians, etc, don't all have relatives with controlling shares in major Western media outlets to make sure we never, ever get to stop hearing about it? After all, to quote Adolf Hitler, "Who now remembers Armenia?"
Covert channels, numbers stations (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:They jail for this in Europe now? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree with, taking an 'obviously impossible, absurd' stance, and the possibly more reasonable people on that same side don't distance themselves from their own fanatics. One of the things I saw during my own involvement in the abortion debate was that on the Pro-Choice side, there were a few women who claimed all sex with males was rape, so the 'except in cases of rape and incest' clause always applied anyway. Some of these wanted to do away with all men and use cloning to copy human females only. There's an odd feeling when somebody casually advocates the genocide of 3 billion people and the use of a technology we don't actually have as the solution to all the world's problems, and nobody else in the room is willing to call them crazy. On the Pro-Life side I saw people (mostly Roman Catholic priests), who saw banning abortion as only the first step in passing laws banning all extramarital sex, then banning masturbation and all pornography including the bra section of the Sears catalog, bringing back the laws that required showing all married couples in movies as sleeping in twin beds, the ones dictating skirt lengths, and on and on.
I suspect many organisations would actually be stronger if they tossed out some people who claim to be part of their coalitions, even if their overall numbers of members dropped. Sometimes the smart thing to do is to say "He doesn't speak for me, even if he claims to.".
The real key is, whether somebody is lying (as you suggest), or insane (as I suggest here), doesn't really matter, and nobody ought to be given a free pass to disrupt discourse because we can't tell if they are one or the other. I don't know if Glenn Beck is insane or mendacious, and the people who say he is crazy like a fox may be the rightist of all, but what he does sheds more heat than light, either way. I don't have to decide if he is nuts or faking it to realise he isn't contributing anything useful. That goes in spades for the holocaust denialists. A specific statement of theirs may seem insane, or a deliberate lie, or sometimes a reasonable statement, but examining a whole series of statements they make, sooner or later you realise they are not adding anything constructive to any of the processes of debate, discussion or education.
It's also stemming from sheer stubbornness and lack of contact with reality sometimes. I'm reminded of the bit in Douglas Hoffstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach", where the Tortoise character gets into an infinite regression: "So if I accept A, B, and C, then I have accepted your premise? Not so fast - lets call that statement D - don't I have to include A, B, C, and D to really accept your premise? Now lets call that claim statement E - Don't I now have to accept A, B, C, D, and E to accept your premise? We can see where this is going - How dare you demand I accept your infinite series of claims without inspection!".
Part of the frustration many of us feel over, say, the climate change or abortion debates seems to be the same sort of thing. There's always some person on the side we don't agree
Re:They jail for this in Europe now? (Score:1, Interesting)
In an argument, there can be two things gone wrong:
- Invalid premises
- Faulty conclusion drawn from valid premises
I will illustrate the first.
1) Obama's father was a Kenyan Muslim. ** true **
2) Obama is a Kenyan Muslim. ** false ** (everything after this is irrelevant, because this premise is flawed.)
--
3) Obama is not a natural citizen. ** nonsense **
4) Where's the birth certificate?? Obama stole the election!! ** nonsense **
I will illustrate the second.
1) George Soros is a left-leaning billionaire. ** true **
2) George Soros has donated millions to left-leaning causes. ** true **
3) George Soros has donated to the Tides Foundation. ** true **
--
4) George Soros uses the Tides Foundation as a front group to support left-wing extremism. ** false **
5) The Tides Foundation must be stopped!! ** false **
Glenn Beck may not make the kinds of errors seen in demonstration #1. With near-perfect consistency, he makes the kinds of errors seen in demonstration #2.
Re:18 weeks? (Score:2, Interesting)
I love how "computer crimes" are punished on an entirely different scale to regular crimes.
Not, quite. If the guy said the same things in person he would have been convicted under Harassment laws. Public Nuisance (which in the UK is both a crime and a tort) and also Anti-Social behaviour. He probably could also have been sued under defamation laws too (claiming to have had sex with the deceased after they died can be seen as a deliberate act of tarnishing their reputations).
His sentence under the law would have been similar. Let me explain. One thing to remember is the main difference here is he committed this offence several times on several different sites. In real life he probably would have been convicted after just doing it once. That would have been less time in jail for him, but only because it would have been a first offence and he wouldn't have done it multiple times. Because he has done the crime multiple times his sentence is longer, if he had done the offence in person and got away with it until he'd done the same amount as what he's done on the internet, he might even have got a longer sentence, but most likely about the same.
You can go bottle someone (break a glass bottle over their head) and you get an average of zero days in jail (suspended for two years). You can go mug someone and get only a week of "hard time" with a year of parole. I mean heck you can go run someone down in your car and still get a lighter sentence than 18 weeks...
You're not comparing apples with oranges. What he has done is covered under Harassment laws. If he'd turned up at the homes of families and friends,or funerals or anywhere else and said these things he would still have got prosecuted. Cases are handled on a case by case basis. You can point to a case where someone ran someone down and got a lighter sentence, but there are also cases where people have run someone down and got longer sentences. Also, you break a bottle over someones head and they get a two year suspended sentence, you break another bottle over someones head you then have those two years from the suspended sentence to serve PLUS whatever else they throw on top for the second crime. This guy has committed the crime multiple times already. It's like catching someone who has repeatedly hit people over the head with bottles till they finally got caught. Someone like that would not get a suspended sentence.
There is no level of rationality to computer crime sentences because the "old people" on both sides of the bench are simply too ignorant and out of touch to really know what the crime involved or how serious it was. This case should never have wasted the UK's courts time and public money let alone the cost of keeping him in jail for any period at all.
Whether done on a computer or in person this crime would have gone to trial and a similar sentence handed down. The only difference I see here is that you think that because it was done on a computer that it shouldn't have gone to trial. The law used in this case was the On-line Harassment laws and it was introduced to stop a loophole of people claiming that because the old harassment laws never stipulated using technology that they could get off. In other words the "old people" who introduced the laws didn't see any difference between someone phoning you and harassing you and someone using the internet to do the exact same thing, the only difference they saw was the delivery method.
Frankly I have a VERY low opinion of the police, judge, and state for this one. I want a million pounds spent on arrested serious criminals and keeping them locked away. Give the mugger, violent thug, or drug dealers 18 week sentences instead of saving them for the "omg computer terrurist?! he uses microsoft and word to send deadly communications of doom!"
Apples and oranges again. He was convicted for harassment ... and if he did it in