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"A student who admitted posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba has been jailed for 56 days."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992
He has also been kicked out of his rugby team and suspended from university.
The guy does appear to be an idiot, but this seems to be a massive over-reaction
hmm, freedom of speech ftw lol
You can easily google what he wrote. Give me about 30 seconds and i could find 100 people sayign worse things online. Even the judges comments are stupid - he admits the punishment is to reflect "public outrage".
Seriously, since when was sentencing of a crime a matter of populist opinion?
Is there a law there that you can't say certain words?
Incitement to violence is against the law, yes- but afaik that wasn't the case here.
Well, since there isn't a constitution or bill of rights like in the U.S there is no "freedom of speech" in Britain per se. There also isn't a equal protection clause protecting people from being made a spectacle of(although I had thought precedence mostly covered these in Britain). However, using coercive force for the sake of the public good is definitely not a new use of law, nor a new justification for various adjudications. That being said, if the courts consistently took similar action in the U.S. (or in Britain or France for that matter) there would be a whole lot more people getting dished out 56 day prison sentences...and then probably fewer. Seems fairly harsh given the prevalence of similar language throughout public discussion, but that might be why the judge thought it should be done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA5v2eZ5ZZE
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03...ors/?hpt=hp_t3
Now here's a place where peeps need to do some heavy time!
Whoops, this is in the wrong forum :/
The comments were pretty liam! :/
doesn't matter what's posted on the net to many jurisdictional issues for government to police the net. with it being posted on the net i don't see were the judge can hand down the sentence. twiter servers are located in the U.S., so the "crime" took place on American soil not British. it didn't become public domain till it arrived on twiters servers located out of the judges jurisdiction. i would file suit for jurisdictional grievance and look for a settlement.in the case of be kicked out of school, you break the rules you pay
Go understand what public domain is, it's about copyrighted information, not what you seem to think it is. And for the record, they may have servers here in the US but I also bet they have servers in the EU.
Some people really overreact in these kind of cases. Some leftwing nuts wanted to prosecute Dutch politician Geert Wilders for hate speech but our prosecutors couldn't find a legal reason to do so. The leftwing nut then went to court to force the prosecutors to prosecute Wilders. They won and so the prosecutors were forced to get Wilders before court but because they still couldn't find anything to charge him with, they asked for a not guilty sentence. What a big waste of taxpayer money that farce was................
pub?lic do?main
The state of belonging or being available to the public as a whole.
thus it didnt become public til it arrived in us servers. when it was on his comp or cell phone it would have been protected under privacy laws. the "law" wasnt broken til it arrived out side of the judges jurisdiction.
awww i think she has a grudge......... awww not getting enough attention
What? The guy was from the UK, in the UK and made the tweets while in the UK. He was tried by a UK judge in a UK court. What has the US got to do with this?
What he said.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bishop
Well, I can't really debate the lawful aspect of it, because I'm not a UK lawyer, but I can do philosophy on it.
I think that most people would agree that incitation to violence is a crime.
Defamation (lying about someone is a way that makes them look bad) is a crime and should rightly be one to the extent that it makes a meaningful impact on a stable person's life (notably, when the portrayal makes the person look really bad and is applied on a wide scale like a publicity).
A physical assault makes such an impact and is a crime and the above simply constitutes a similar assault of a psychological nature (which can make an equally meaningful impact).
Personally, I'd also make public crucifixion of a living person's character (to the point where it's applied like a publicity and money is put into it), truthful or not, a crime if the accusations pertain to areas that are considered private (ex: what happens in the person's bedroom between 2 consenting adults where nobody gets hurt).
Generic racist remarks clearly don't apply to those areas if they don't incite to violence and are too generic to apply someone in particular, but at the same time, I would not legally penalize the resulting social stigma that follows (ex: potential employers not hiring the person based on his character).
the act didnt become illegal til it was posted in foreign country. the laws of the host country were not broken and renforced by the first amendment. if anything they should have gone to the international court for prosecution. they couldnt because host country isnt apart of the international court system. further more there was no violation in the uk on top of that. if he had posted something localy the judge would have had jurisdiction. what is posted on the net would fall under ICCPR and the uk is part of that treaty. not only did the judge go beyond his jurisdiction he broke international law doing it.
Laws apply to the country where the action was made.
Yes flutterby, but that isn't the totality of it. If the UK had not prosecuted the US could have applied for jurisdiction if the servers were only located there. The UK are fully within their rights to prosecute for an action that originated in their jurisdiction though. IMO the sentence was overboard.
I agree with you totally.
1. Jurisdiction
A. the act didnt take place on U.K soil
B. the act wasnt public til was posted on U.S soil
C. Jurisdiction would have fallen under interpool/ international courts
2. Crime
A. no crime was commited in the U.k, what was on his comp/cell would have been protected by
privacy rights til it became public.
3. International law
A. his freeom of expression is covered by ICCPR .
It honestly could have been tried in either country. My law professor said that as long as part of the crime occurs in one 'jurisdiction' it can be tried.
Our law says one thing, therefore it wouldn't be tried here because it isn't considered a crime here.
yah but no part was committed in the u.k. the jurisdictional problem isnt the crime but were the crime happend. the would maybe work in interstate/international comerce in the case of more then one country arguing for jurisdiction.
it dosnt real matter jurisdiction real isnt the important part. i can think of 2 international laws that are being violated. more importantly both of them asside hes still protected under ICCPR .
me i think the kid is a douche how ever the law is the law. judges like this should removed from office and disbarred. legislation from the bench is a dangerous thing. its a judges job to uphold law not make it.
Swansea University, is in Wales part of the UK. He typed it on his computer/phone in Wales, therefore he committed the crime in the UK. Hence... they can claim jurisdiction.
like i said privacy rights, it didnt become public til it reached america
It becomes public at the time the public can read it. He was arrested AFTER it became public. He tried to blame it on someone else and erase the page completely.
Explain to me, how a hacker in any country can be prosecuted even though the information does not become public? Or internet predators? There are things that
never come to light to the public that are crimes in country they are committed.
the law wasnt broken til it became public. a computer hacker could send a virus allday long to himself and not break the law.if he had wrote it in diary it wouldn't have broken the law. once it came into view of the public it was not only slander it was criminal in this case.
in any event he without a doubt open to litigation in cival court. no way arround that, both parties are located in the U.k. only way you could dodge that fireball if the assets were located in another country .
i dont think ICCPR would protect him in cival but i could be wrong