Student sentenced to jail term for racially offensive tweets

[Bishop]

"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

[Palem]

hmm, freedom of speech ftw lol

[Bishop]

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?

[lastunicorn]

Is there a law there that you can't say certain words?

[Bishop]

Incitement to violence is against the law, yes- but afaik that wasn't the case here.

[Topsy]

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

[Topsy]

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03...ors/?hpt=hp_t3

Now here's a place where peeps need to do some heavy time!

[Bishop]

Whoops, this is in the wrong forum :/

[[CGF] Leon]

The comments were pretty liam! :/

[Agronaut]

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

[flutterby]

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.

[Landro]

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................

[Agronaut]

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

[Bishop]

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?

[flutterby]

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.