Insulting UK Law

  Hampshire Constabulary sent five police officers to arrest a man in Aldershot for a Facebook post containing an image that made Progress Pride flags (flags that combine the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rainbow pride flag with a chevron containing the blue, pink, and white stripes of the transgender flag) look like a swastika.

The image that the man was arrested for posting has been widely shared online by thousands of social media users, including Reclaim Party leader and free speech activist Laurence Fox, who was present when the man was arrested.

Harry Miller, a former UK police officer and chairman of the UK political party Reclaim, was also arrested for attempting to obstruct the arrest of the man who posted the transgender flag swastika.

Miller also accused the police of trying to shakedown the man during this visit by offering to downgrade the crime to a non-crime if the man agreed to pay £60 and attend a Community Awareness Course that would give him a mental toolbox that will enable him to keep out of trouble in the future.

Miller and the man were subsequently released without charge. According to Hampshire Constabulary, the man was released under investigation but it will be taking no further action against him. Miller was released under investigation but inquiries are ongoing and it's still a live investigation.

Donna Jones, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire and Isle of Wight, expressed concern about the proportionality and necessity of the police's response to the incident. She said:

When incidents on social media receive not one but two visits from police officers, but burglaries and non-domestic break-ins don't always get a police response, something is wrong, Jones said. As Police Commissioner, I am committed to ensuring Hampshire Constabulary serves the public as the majority of people would expect. It appears on this occasion this has not happened.

Jones added that she will be writing to the UK College of Policing to make them aware of the incident and encourage greater clarification on the guidance in order to ensure that police forces can respond more appropriately in the future.

 

Offsite Comment: When did memes become a police matter?

2nd August 2022. See article from spiked-online.com

We need to put our dimwitted, would-be Stasi back in its box.

 

Update: Hampshire Police scraps its hate crime re-education course

7th August 2022. See article from dailymail.co.uk

Hampshire Police were revealed to have been more or less forcing people accused of online insults to attend a hate crime re-education course or else face prosecution for the insult.

Hampshire Constabulary was among three forces in the country that ran the two-hour re-educational sessions for people accused of racism, sexism, misogyny and transphobia.

The Orwellian scheme was funded out of the force's Police and Crime Commissioner's budget, but faced controversy when an  army veteran was arrested for a trivial gay pride insult which showed four LGBT pride flags positioned to make a swastika.

No doubt other victims of the police harrasmment have been forced into attending but this time around the victim had contact with friends that could generate enough publicity to get the police deservedly shamed.

Donna Jones, Tory Police Commissioner for Hampshire, said that she is ending the contract with the company which manages the programme.

The Law Commission has published recommendations to address the harms arising from online abuse . The recommendations include a coherent set of communications offences to more effectively target harmful communications while increasing protection for freedom of expression.

More than 70% of UK adults have a social media profile and internet users spend over four hours online each day on average. Whilst the online world offers important opportunities to share ideas and engage with one another, it has also increased the scope for abuse and harm. A report by the Alan Turing institute estimates that approximately one third of people in the UK been exposed to online abuse.

The recommendations, which have been laid in Parliament, would reform the "communications offences" found in section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 ("MCA 1988") and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 ("CA 2003"). These offences do not provide consistent protection from harm and in some instances disproportionately interfere with freedom of expression.

The reforms would address the harms arising from online abuse by modernising the existing communications offences, ensuring that the law is clearer and that it effectively targets serious harm and criminality. The recommendations aim to do this in a proportionate way in order to protect freedom of expression. They also seek to "future-proof" the law in this area as much as possible by not confining the offences to any particular mode or type of communication.

The need for reform

The laws that govern online abusive behaviour are not working as well as they should. The existing offences are ineffective at criminalising genuinely harmful behaviour and in some instances disproportionately interfere with freedom of expression.

Reliance on vague terms like "grossly offensive" and "indecent" sets the threshold for criminality too low and potentially criminalises some forms of free expression that ought to be protected. For example, consensual sexting between adults could be "indecent", but is not worthy of criminalisation.

Other behaviours such as taking part in pile-on harassment, which can be genuinely harmful and distressing are not adequately criminalised. Additionally, the law does not effectively deal with behaviours such as cyberflashing and encouraging serious self-harm.

The result is that the law as it currently stands over-criminalises in some situations and under-criminalises in others. This is what the Commission's recommendations aim to correct.

Recommendations in detail: The harm-based offence

The Commission is recommending a new offence based on likely psychological harm. This will shift the focus away from the content of a communication (and whether it is indecent or grossly offensive) toward its potentially significant harmful effects. The recommended new harm-based offence would criminalise behaviour if:

• The defendant sends or posts a communication that is likely to cause harm to a likely audience

• in sending or posting the communication, the defendant intends to cause harm to a likely audience

• the defendant sends or posts the communication without reasonable excuse .

Within the offence, harm refers to serious distress. This threshold is one well-known to the criminal law, including in offences in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Reasonable excuse would include whether the communication was or was meant as a contribution to a matter of public interest. Media articles would be exempt from the offence.

This new offence could also capture pile-on harassment -- when a number of different individuals send harassing communications to a victim. The fact that the offence is context-specific means it could be applied where a person deliberately joins a pile-on intending to cause harm.

Recommendations in detail: new offences

To complement the harm-based offence, the Law Commission has made recommendations to ensure the law is clearer and protects against a variety of abusive online behaviour.

• Cyberflashing: The Sexual Offences Act 2003 should be amended to include the sending of images or video recordings of genitals, for example, "dick pics" sent via AirDrop.

  • To recognise the violation of a victim's sexual autonomy without their consent, the offence would require either that the defendant intends to cause alarm, distress or humiliation, or if the defendant is acting for a sexual purpose, the defendant is reckless as to whether the victim is caused alarm, distress or humiliation.

• Encouragement or glorification of serious self-harm: An offence to target intentional encouragement or assistance of self-harm at a high threshold (equivalent to grievous bodily harm).

  • The change would ensure that the offence targets the most serious encouragement or assistance of self-harm without unduly criminalising vulnerable people.

• Sending flashing images with intent to induce a seizure : A specific offence for sending flashing images to people with epilepsy with the intention of inducing seizures.

• Knowingly false communications : A defendant would be liable if they knowingly send or post a communication that they know to be false and they intend to cause non-trivial emotional, psychological, or physical harm to the likely audience, without a reasonable excuse.

  • This would raise the threshold for the offence currently in the Communications Act 2003, from knowingly causing "annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety" to causing harm.

• Threatening communications : We recommend a specific offence targeting communications that contain threats of serious harm.

  • It would be an offence where the defendant intends the victim to fear the threat will be carried out or the defendant is reckless as to whether the victim fears that the threat will be carried out.

  • The offence defines "serious harm" as including serious injury (equivalent to grievous bodily harm in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861), rape and serious financial harm.

The reforms, if enacted, involve a shift away from prohibited categories of communication (eg "grossly offensive") to focus on the harmful consequences of particular communications. Our aim is to ensure harmful communications are appropriately addressed while providing robust protection for freedom of expression.

Repeal Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and expunge all convictions of those whom have been persecuted under this section of the law. As well as acknowledge that the UK internet also shares our respect for peoples freedoms of speech and expression.

Over the last decade, people have been convicted [with record] under the pretence of personally/potentially grossly offensive material (of which no definition is given) over jokes and petty arguments on the internet via social media and other platforms. It is because of the increase of these cases that a growing number of people are concerned for their own online safety and the devastating real world ramifications under this section of law, that this petition has been created and signed.

Update: Government response

29th May 2021.

The petition has received 16124 signatures and so warrants a government response as follows:

We are committed to making the UK the safest place to be online while upholding rights to freedom of expression. The Law Commission is currently reviewing harmful and abusive communications online.

The Government recognises the importance of free speech, particularly in the context of online communications.

Current UK legislation protects the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, this right is qualified and may be restricted in some circumstances, including where there may be a serious intent to cause harm or incite hatred against others.

We are committed to ensuring the criminal law keeps pace with changes in technology, while also taking into account harmful communications online. Against this background, the Government has asked the Law Commission to review existing laws related to harmful and abusive communications online. This review is considering sections 127(1) and 127(2) of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, determining whether these laws need amending and updating with new offences to account for a range of harms online including pile-on abuse, cyberflashing and self-harm.

Existing communications offences are important for protecting people from criminal activity, including online. However, we recognise that some elements pose problems, including vagueness in terms such as grossly offensive, obscene and indecent, which the Law Commission highlights in their consultation paper. The Law Commission's proposals are therefore an important step towards addressing such limitations.

The Law Commission has now consulted on provisional proposals for reform. They will publish final recommendations by the summer, which the Government will carefully consider. Subject to final proposals, the Government may be minded to take these forward into legislation, where necessary and appropriate to do so. When considering potential reforms, we will guarantee strong protections for citizens from harm while upholding the right to freedom of expression.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport

Captain Sir Tom Moore is a retired British soldier who has been canonised by the British media for good work in fundraising for the NHS' coronavirus campaign.

Of course the over the top praise has led to the occasion ironic comment, joke or even the occasional insult. But be warned contrary views do not go down well with the police.

Now a man has been charged in Lanarkshire in connection with an offensive social media tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore. A Police Scotland spokeswoman said:

On Friday 5 February 2021, we received a report of an offensive tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore who died on Tuesday 2 February. A 35-year-old man has subsequently been arrested and charged in connection with communication offences and is due to appear at Lanark Sheriff Court on Wednesday 17 February.

And BoingBoing notes the irony. Of course the police boasted about their arrest to the press, so now millions of people worldwide have read the illegal tweet:

The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.

Update: Charged

20th February 2021. See article from reclaimthenet.org

A Scottish man from Glasgow has been charged over a tweet against Sir Tom Moore. The man pleaded not guilty in court.

On February 3, a day after Moore's death, the man tweeted:

The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.

A few days later, Kelly was charged under the Communications Act of 2003 , which prohibits the sending of electronic communications that could be deemed grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing, nature.

The decision to charge Kelly caused a stir on social media. Actor and political activist Laurence Fox tweeted:

The police should do their jobs, which is to investigate actual crime, not arresting idiots who tweet idiotic things. Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of any open society. Protect it, even if you don't like or agree with it.

A policeman has been charged with a criminal offence after allegedly sending a supposedly grossly offensive image of the arrest of George Floyd to colleagues.

He will appear in court charged with sending the image by means of a public electronic communications network, contrary to the Communications Act 2003, on May 30 last year.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said the charge against the Devon and Cornwall Police sergeant came after an altered image of George Floyd's arrest in the US was shared within a WhatsApp group that included a number of other police officers and staff.

An IOPC spokesman added that they had investigated the image after it was brought to their attention by Devon and Cornwall Police. The officer is due to appear before Newton Abbot Magistrates' Court on January 28, the IOPC said.

Of course the public aren't being allowed to judge for themselves, and the joke has been kept secret.

Reform of the law is needed to protect victims from harmful online behaviour including abusive messages, cyber-flashing, pile-on harassment, and the malicious sharing of information known to be false. The Law Commission is consulting on proposals to improve the protection afforded to victims by the criminal law, while at the same time provide better safeguards for freedom of expression.

In our Consultation Paper launched on 11 September 2020, we make a number of proposals for reform to ensure that the law is clearer and effectively targets serious harm and criminality arising from online abuse. This is balanced with the need to better protect the right to freedom of expression.

The proposals include:

• A new offence to replace the communications offences (the Malicious Communications Act 1988 (MCA 1988) and the Communications Act 2003 (CA 2003)), to criminalise behaviour where a communication would likely cause harm.

  • This would cover emails, social media posts and WhatsApp messages, in addition to pile-on harassment (when a number of different individuals send harassing communications to a victim).

  • This would include communication sent over private networks such as Bluetooth or a local intranet, which are not currently covered under the CA 2003.

  • The proposals include introduction of the requirement of proof of likely harm. Currently, neither proof of likely harm nor proof of actual harm are required under the existing communications offences.

• Cyber-flashing -- the unsolicited sending of images or video recordings of one's genitals -- should be included as a sexual offence under section 66 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. This would ensure that additional protections for victims are available.

• Raising the threshold for false communications so that it would only be an offence if the defendant knows the post is false, they are intending to cause non-trivial emotional, psychological, or physical harm, and if they have no excuse.

The consultation period will run until 18 December 2020.

Britain's first police unit for tackling supposed online hate crime has brought charges against less than 1% of the cases it has investigated.

Scotland Yard's online hate crime hub has logged 1,851 incidents since its launch in April 2017 and 17 cases, or 0.92%, resulted in charges. And of those seven have led to prosecutions, Freedom of Information figures show. There are three more cases pending a charging decision from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The £1.7million scheme, launched by London mayor Sadiq Khan, has however resulted in 59 being given youth referrals, harassment warnings or have been noted as apologising.

The Metropolitan Police said the £326,344 needed for the pilot year of the hub was funded by the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). Following the trial, a unit of five officers led by a detective inspector was given a £323,829 budget for 2018/19 and £363,000 in 2019/20 by the police force.

Scotland Yard said the unit now deals with both online and offline cases, reviewing every hate crime reported to the Met on a daily basis.

The low number of charges is thought to be due to the high CPS charging threshold for online hate, and the difficulties investigators face in obtaining information from social media companies.

The Nazi Pug: Joke or Hate? is a BBC 3 documentary.

Markus Meechan (known on YouTube as Count Dankula) is the victim of a travesty of justice as he was found guilty of posting a YouTube video judged grossly offensive and containing menacing, anti-Semitic and racist material. The video was a joke. but what does the prosecution of a YouTube comedian mean for freedom of expression. The BBC asks: is a censorious state overstepping the mark? Or are there some things you just shouldn't joke about?

BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Dan Murdoch (Britain's Forgotten Men; KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy) returns with this documentary following Markus as he explores London's comedy scene, to see what stand-ups can get away with, and why there's a backlash against edgy humour.

Matthew Berlow, of Glasgow Friends of Israel, said of the BBC documentary:

Are we really at the stage when we can now laugh at the painful deaths of six million human beings and call it edgy comedy?

Berlow has also called on YouTube to remove the original Count Dankula joke video that has know been viewed 4.3 million times. He claimed that YouTube is perpetuating the crime that Meechan was convicted of.

In 2017, Chelsea Russell, a Liverpool teenager with Asperger's syndrome, paid tribute on her Instagram profile to a 13-year-old friend who died when he was hit by a car. She quoted the lyrics of a rap song, I'm Trippin" by Snap Dogg, alongside the phrase 'RIP Frankie Murphy. Many other teenagers used the lyrics to pay tribute to Murphy.

A year later, Russell's profile came to the attention of the police, who decided to arrest her and have her charged. The lyrics she quoted Kill a snitch nigga, rob a rich nigga were found in court to be grossly offensive and Russell was convicted of a hate crime . For nothing more than quoting rap lyrics, she was placed on an eight-week, 8am-to-8pm curfew, fitted with an ankle tag, and fined £585.

Last week, the conviction was overturned on appeal. Russell's defence lawyer slammed the initial verdict as ridiculous, akin to the actions of a totalitarian state.

Offsite Comment: Chelsea Russell and the depravity of PC

27th February 2019. See article from spiked-online.com by Fraser Myers

A musician found guilty of broadcasting grossly offensive anti-Semitic songs has had her conviction upheld.

Alison Chabloz has written many politically incorrect, humorous and insulting songs often targeted at jews but also more generally against the PC establishment. The songs have been published on many internet platforms including YouTube.

In May she was convicted of three charges relating to the songs and was given a suspended jail sentence by magistrates which she appealed against.

A judge at Southwark Crown Court has upheld her conviction ruling the content was particularly repellent. In the songs Chabloz suggested the Holocaust was a bunch of lies and referred to Auschwitz as a theme park.

Chabloz was convicted of two counts of sending an offensive, indecent or menacing message through a public communications network and a third charge relating to a song on YouTube.

She was sentenced to 20 weeks' imprisonment, suspended for two years and banned from social media for 12 months.

During the appeal Adrian Davies, defending, told judge Christopher Hehir: It would be a very, very strong thing to say that a criminal penalty should be imposed on someone for singing in polemical terms about matters on which she feels so strongly.

The case started as a private prosecution by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism before the Crown Prosecution Service took over. The group's chairman, Gideon Falter, said: This is the first conviction in the UK over Holocaust denial on social media.

People convicted of insulting people online should be named and shamed on a government register of offenders under new laws to censor social media, says an all-party committee of MPs.

The Commons petitions committee claimed new laws were needed to combat online harms because current legislation was not fit for purpose and self-regulation by the social media firms had failed.

The committee was responding to a petition, backed by more than 220,000 people, from reality TV star and model Katie Price who demanded new online laws and a register of offenders after her disabled son, Harvey, was viciously trolled for his condition, colour and size.

The MPs believe a criminal law, which covered online abuse and included proper recognition of hate crimes against disabled people, will achieve what the petition is looking for from a register, as criminal convictions will show up as part of a Disclosure and Barring Service check, said the MPs.

The committee said a high proportion of abusive content related to football with most shockingly the name of Harvey Price used by fans as an insult for someone's ability as a footballer.

Reforms to the law are required to protect victims from online and social media-based abuse, according to a new Report by the Law Commission for England and Wales.

In its Scoping Report assessing the state of the law in this area, published today [1st November 2018] the Law Commission raises concerns about the lack of coherence in the current criminal law and the problems this causes for victims, police and prosecutors. It is also critical of the current law's ability to protect people harmed by a range of behaviour online including:

• Receiving abusive and offensive communications
• "Pile on" harassment, often on social media
• Misuse of private images and information

The Commission is calling for:

• reform and consolidation of existing criminal laws dealing with offensive and abusive communications online
• a specific review considering how the law can more effectively protect victims who are subject to a campaign of online harassment
• a review of how effectively the criminal law protects personal privacy online

Professor David Ormerod QC, Law Commissioner for Criminal Law said:

"As the internet and social media have become an everyday part of our lives, online abuse has become commonplace for many."

"Our report highlights the ways in which the criminal law is not keeping pace with these technological changes. We identify the areas of the criminal law most in need of reform in order to protect victims and hold perpetrators to account."

Responding to the Report, Digital Minister Margot James said:

"Behaviour that is illegal offline should be treated the same when it's committed online. We've listened to victims of online abuse as it's important that the right legal protections are in place to meet the challenges of new technology.

"There is much more to be done and we'll be considering the Law Commission's findings as we develop a White Paper setting out new laws to make the UK a safer place to be online.

Jess Phillips MP, Chair, and Rt Hon Maria Miller MP, Co-Chair, of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence and Abuse and Katie Ghose, Chief Executive of Women's Aid, welcomed the Report saying:

"Online abuse has a devastating impact on survivors and makes them feel as though the abuse is inescapable. Online abuse does not happen in the 'virtual world' in isolation; 85% of survivors surveyed by Women's Aid experienced a pattern of online abuse together with offline abuse. Yet too often it is not taken as seriously as abuse 'in the real world'.

"The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence and Abuse has long called for legislation in this area to be reviewed to ensure that survivors are protected and perpetrators of online abuse held to account. We welcome the Law Commission's report, which has found that gaps and inconsistencies in the law mean survivors are being failed. We support the call for further review and reform of the law".

The need for reform

We were asked to assess whether the current criminal law achieved parity of treatment between online and offline offending. For the most part, we have concluded that abusive online communications are, at least theoretically, criminalised to the same or even a greater degree than equivalent offline offending. However, we consider there is considerable scope for reform:

• Many of the applicable offences do not adequately reflect the nature of some of the offending behaviour in the online environment, and the degree of harm it can cause.
• Practical and cultural barriers mean that not all harmful online conduct is pursued in terms of criminal law enforcement to the same extent that it might be in an offline context.
• More generally, criminal offences could be improved so they are clearer and more effectively target serious harm and criminality.
• The large number of overlapping offences can cause confusion.
• Ambiguous terms such as "gross offensiveness" "obscenity" and "indecency" don't provide the required clarity for prosecutors.

Reforms would help to reduce and tackle, not only online abuse and offence generally but also:

• "Pile on" harassment , where online harassment is coordinated against an individual. The Report notes that "in practice, it appears that the criminal law is having little effect in punishing and deterring certain forms of group abuse".
• The most serious privacy breaches -- for example the Report highlights concerns about the laws around sharing of private sexual images. It also questions whether the law is adequate to deal with victims who find their personal information e.g. about their health or sexual history, widely spread online.

Impact on victims

The Law Commission heard from those affected by this kind of criminal behaviour including victims' groups, the charities that support them, MPs and other high-profile victims.

The Report analyses the scale of online offending and suggests that studies show that the groups in society most likely to be affected by abusive communications online include women, young people, ethnic minorities and LGBTQ individuals. For example, the Report finds that gender-based online hate crime, particularly misogynistic abuse, is particularly prevalent and damaging.

It also sets out the factors which make online abuse so common -- including the disinhibition of communicating with an unseen victim and the ease with which victims can be identified.

The Report highlights harms caused to the victims of online abuse which include:

• psychological effects, such as depression and anxiety
• emotional harms, such as feelings of shame, loneliness and distress
• physiological harms, including suicide and self-harm in the most extreme cases
• exclusion from public online space and corresponding feelings of isolation
• economic harms
• wider societal harms

It concludes that abuse by groups of offenders online, and the use of visual images to perpetrate abuse are two of the ways in which online abuse can be aggravated.

Next steps

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) will now analyse the Report and decide on the next steps including what further work the Law Commission can do to produce recommendations for how the criminal law can be improved to tackle online abuse.

Comment: Law Commission must safeguard freedom of expression

See  statement from indexoncensorship.org

Index on Censorship urges the Law Commission to safeguard freedom of expression as it moves towards the second phase of its review of abusive and offensive online communications.

The Law Commission published a report on the first phase of its review of criminal law in this area on 1 November 2018.

While Index welcomes the report's recognition that current UK law lacks clarity and certainty, the review is addressing questions that impact directly on freedom of expression and the Law Commission should now proceed with great caution.

Safeguarding the fundamental right to freedom of expression should be a guiding principle for the the Law Commission's next steps. Successive court rulings have confirmed that freedom of expression includes having and expressing views that offend, shock or disturb. As Lord Justice Sir Stephen Sedley said in a 1999 ruling:

"Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having".

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt also reaffirmed the UK's commitment to the protection and promotion of freedom of expression this week , asserting the importance of a free media in particular as a cornerstone of democracy.

The next phase of the review should outline how the UK can show global leadership by setting an example for how to improve outdated legislation in a way that ensures freedom of expression, including speech that is contentious, unwelcome and provocative.

Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said:

"Index will be studying the Law Commission's first phase report on its review of abusive and offensive online communications carefully. Future proposals could have a very negative impact on freedom of expression online and in other areas. Index urges the Law Commission to proceed with care."

The new head of the Police Federation John Apter, who represents 120,000 rank and file officers across England and Wales, has said his members were incredibly frustrated because they have been assigned to sorting out social media spats rather than tackling more serious crimes like burglary.

The new head explained that while resourcing remained the main issue facing policing, there was also a lack of common sense when it came to priorities.

Last week it emerged that Yorkshire Police had asked people to report insults on social media, even if they were not considered to be a hate crime. Other forces have been criticised recently for using computer programmes rather than experienced officers to decide whether a burglary is worth investigating. Such initiatives have led to criticism of the police and the observation that the service is out of touch with the public.

But Apter said nobody was more frustrated than police officers when they were prevented from attending burglaries and other serious crimes. Burglary is one of the most intrusive, horrible crimes that a householder can go through. It makes you feel incredibly vulnerable, but people can sometimes wait days for a police response, Apter said.

A man who suffered a miscarriage of justice after being convicted for a joke has been refused permission to appeal against a conviction for supposedly causing gross offence.

Mark Meechan, who blogs under the name Count Dankula, was fined £800 in April after being found guilty under the Communications Act over a  video joke in which he trained his girlfriend's dog to perform Nazi salutes.

A letter from the court claimed the appeal was not arguable and in each of its elements is wholly misconceived. It also dismissed arguments made by Meechan's lawyers over the judge's handling of witness evidence at Airdrie Sheriff Court in March and the meaning of grossly offensive. The letter said:

The appeal against conviction is without merit. Likewise the appeal against sentence is not arguable -- this was a deeply unpleasant offence in which disgraceful and utterly offensive material was very widely distributed by the appellant, it said. This was to the considerable distress of the community in question and -- just as disturbingly -- to the apparent approval of a large number of persons who appear to share the appellant's racist views.

Indeed it must be observed that in the circumstance the appellant was fortunate that the learned sheriff was not considering custody as an option.

A woman has been convicted for performing offensive songs that included lyrics denying the Holocaust.

Alison Chabloz sang her compositions at a meeting of the far-right London Forum group.

A judge at Westminster Magistrates' Court found Chabloz had violated laws criminalising offence and intended to insult Jewish people.

District judge John Zani delayed her sentencing until 14 June but told the court: On the face of it this does pass the custody threshold.

Chabloz, a Swiss-British dual national, had uploaded tunes to YouTube including one defining the Nazi death camp Auschwitz as a theme park just for fools and the gas chambers a proven hoax. The songs remain available on YouTube.

The songs were partly set to traditional Jewish folk music, with lyrics like: Did the Holocaust ever happen? Was it just a bunch of lies? Seems that some intend to pull the wool over our eyes.

Adrian Davies, defending, previously told the judge his ruling would be a landmark one, setting a precedent on the exercise of free speech.

But Judge Zani said Chabloz failed by some considerable margin to persuade the court that her right to freedom of speech should provide her with immunity from prosecution. He said:

I am entirely satisfied that she will have intended to insult those to whom the material relates. Having carefully considered all evidence received and submissions made, I am entirely satisfied that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty.

Chabloz was convicted of two counts of causing an offensive, indecent or menacing message to be sent over a public communications network after performing two songs at a London Forum event in 2016. As there wa nothing indecent or menacing in the songs, Chabloz was convicted for an offensive message.

See The Britisher for an eloquent and passionate defence of free speech.

Mersey side police have threatend

We've issued the following statement following reports of social media posts being made in relation to Alder Hey Hospital and the ongoing situation with Alfie Evans:

Chief Inspector Chris Gibson said: Merseyside Police has been made aware of a number of social media posts which have been made with reference to Alder Hey Hospital and the ongoing situation involving Alfie Evans.

I would like to make people aware that these posts are being monitored and remind social media users that any offences including malicious communications and threatening behaviour will be investigated and where necessary will be acted upon.

Free speech hero Count Dankula got one over on a news reporter from Sky who wanted to do his boot to stick the establishment boot in.

Count Dankula was well up for the challenge and wiped Mr snotty's nose into the ground.

See video from YouTube

Youtuber Count Dankula who filmed his girlfriend's pet dog doing a Nazi salute has been fined £800.

Mark Meechan was sentenced at Airdrie Sheriff Court after he was found guilty last month of a 'hate crime'.

He recorded his girlfriend's pug, Buddha, responding to statements such as gas the Jews and Sieg Heil by raising its paw during the footage called M8 Yur Dug's a Nazi .

The original Youtube video had been viewed more than three million times on YouTube.

Surely free speech has dropped to a new low in Britain but the widespread disquiet at the verdict may have helped keep Count Dankula out of prison.

Free speech campaigners orgainised a protest in London to coincide with the announcement of the sentencing. See video from YouTube

Update: Sheriff's comments

24th April 2018. See  article from dailymail.co.uk

Sheriff O'Carroll had told the court he did not believe Meechan had made the video only to annoy his girlfriend and ruled it was anti-Semitic. Fining Meechan, he said:

You deliberately chose the Holocaust as the theme of the video.

I also found it proved that the video contained anti-Semitic, and racist material, in that it explicitly and exclusively referred to Jews, the Holocaust and the role of the Nazis in the death of six million Jews in a grossly offensive manner. You knew or must have known that.

The social work report on you is important. It is very favourable to you and, leaving aside the circumstances of this offence, shows you to have led a generally pro-social life thus far.

It also shows that you have learned a certain amount from your experiences and that you are of low risk of reoffending.

In these circumstances, I rule out a custodial sentence and therefore any alternative to a custodial sentence. You have a certain amount of income and other resources according to the reports. I now fine you the sum of 2£800.

Offsite Comment: Count Dankula and the death of free speech

24th April 2018. See  article from blogs.spectator.co.uk by Brendan O'Neill

On freedom of speech, Britain has become the laughing stock of the Western world. People actually laugh at us. I recently gave a talk in Brazil on political correctness and I told the audience about the arrest and conviction of a Scottish man for publishing a video of his girlfriend's pug doing a Nazi salute for a joke and they laughed. Loudly. Some of them refused to believed it was true.

Read the full  article from blogs.spectator.co.uk

A woman from Liverpool has been found guilty of sending a supposedly grossly offensive message after posting rap lyrics on Instagram.

The post referenced lyrics from Snap Dogg's I'm Trippin' to pay tribute to a 13-year-old boy who had died in a road crash in 2017. It is not clear exactly which words were deemed to 'hate crimes' but the words 'bitch' and 'nigga' seem to be the only relevant candidates.

Merseyside Police were anonymously sent a screenshot of the woman's Instagram update (on a public profile), which was received by hate crime unit PC Dominique Walker. PC Walker told the court the term the woman had used was grossly offensive to her as a black woman and to the general community.

The Liverpool Echo reported that the woman's defence had argued the usage of the word had changed over time and it had been used by superstar rapper Jay-Z in front of thousands of people at the Glastonbury Festival.

The woman was given an eight-week community order, placed on an eight-week curfew and fined £585.

Prosecutors said her sentence was increased from a fine to a community order as it was a 'hate crime'.

Offsite Comment: Now it's a crime to quote rap lyrics? Censorship in Britain is out of control.

See article from spiked-online.com By Andrew Doyle

So we are facing the bizarre situation in which a teenager has been given an eight-week community order and curfew because one police officer perceives a black musician's work to be inherently racist.

Offsite Video: Liverpool hate speech verdict

See video from YouTube By The Britisher, An eloquent examination of yet another British free speech failure.

Update: The Death of free speech

See  article from blogs.spectator.co.uk by Brendan O'Neill

Brendan O'Neill notes that these are the lyrics she quoted:

Off a whole gram of molly, and my bitch think I'm trippin.
Now I'm clutchin' on my forty, all I can think about is drillin''.
I hate fuck shit, slap a bitch nigga, kill a snitch nigga, rob a rich nigga.'

O'Neill comments:

We now live under a bizarre tyranny of self-esteem, where hurt feelings can lead to court cases, and where the easily offended can marshal the state to crush those who dared to offend them. An unholy marriage between our wimpish offence-taking culture and a state desperate to be seen as caring and purposeful has nurtured an insidious new censorship that targets everything from comedy and rap to criticism of Islam or strongly stated political views.

A man who filmed a pet dog giving Nazi salutes before putting the footage on YouTube has been convicted of committing a hate crime.

Mark Meechan recorded his girlfriend's pug, Buddha, responding to statements such as gas the Jews and Sieg Heil by raising its paw.

It is interesting to note that the British press carefully avoided informing readers of Meechan's now well known Youtube name, Count Dankula.

The original clip had been viewed more than three million times on YouTube. It is still online on Youtube albeit in restricted mode where it is not included in searches and comments are not accepted.

Meechan went on trial at Airdrie Sheriff Court where he denied any wrong doing. He insisted he made the video, which was posted in April 2016, to annoy his girlfriend Suzanne Kelly, 29.

But Sheriff Derek O'Carroll found him guilty of a charge under the Communications Act that he posted a video on social media and YouTube which O'Carroll claimed to be grossly offensive because it was anti-semitic and racist in nature and was aggravated by religious prejudice.

Meechan will be sentenced on 23rd April but has hinted in social media that court officials are looking into some sort of home arrest option.

Comedian Ricky Gervais took to Twitter to comment on the case after the verdict. He tweeted:

A man has been convicted in a UK court of making a joke that was deemed 'grossly offensive'. If you don't believe in a person's right to say things that you might find 'grossly offensive', then you don't believe in Freedom of Speech.

Yorkshire MP Philip Davies has demanded a debate on freedom of speech. Speaking in the House of Commons, hesaid:

We guard our freedom of speech in this House very dearly indeed...but we don't often allow our constituents the same freedoms. Can we have a debate about freedom of speech in this country - something this country has long held dear and is in danger of throwing away needlessly?

Andrea Leadsom, leader of the Commons, responded that there are limits to free speech:

I absolutely commend (Mr Davies) for raising this very important issue. We do of course fully support free speech ...HOWEVER... there are limits to it and he will be aware there are laws around what you are allowed to say and I don't know the circumstances of his specific point, but he may well wish to seek an adjournment debate to take this up directly with ministers.

Comment: Freedom of expression includes the right to offend

See article from indexoncensorship.org

Index on Censorship condemns the decision by a Scottish court to convict a comedian of a hate crime for teaching his girlfriend's dog a Nazi salute.

Mark Meechan, known as Count Dankula, was found guilty on Tuesday of being grossly offensive, under the UK's Communications Act of 2003. Meechan could be sentenced with up to six months in prison and be required to pay a fine.

Index disagrees fundamentally with the ruling by the Scottish Sheriff Appeals Court. According to the Daily Record, Judge Derek O'Carroll ruled: The description of the video as humorous is no magic wand. This court has taken the freedom of expression into consideration. But the right to freedom of expression also comes with responsibility. Defending everyone's right to free speech must include defending the rights of those who say things we find shocking or offensive

Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said: Numerous rulings by British and European courts have affirmed that freedom of expression includes the right to offend. Defending everyone's right to free speech must include defending the rights of those who say things we find shocking or offensive. Otherwise the freedom is meaningless.

One of the most noted judgements is from a 1976 European Court of Human Rights case, Handyside v. United Kingdom, which found: Freedom of expression206is applicable not only to 'information' or 'ideas' that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population.

Video Comment: Count Dankula has been found guilty

See video from YouTube by The Britisher

A powerful video response to another step in the decline of British free speech.

Offsite Comment : Hate-speech laws help only the powerful

23rd March 2018. See  article from spiked-online.com by Alexander Adams

Talking to the press after the judgement, Meechan said today, context and intent were completely disregarded. He explained during the trial that he was not a Nazi and that he had posted the video to annoy his girlfriend. Sheriff Derek O'Carroll declared the video anti-Semitic and racist in nature. He added that the accused knew that the material was offensive and knew why it was offensive. The original investigation was launched following zero complaints from the public. Offensiveness apparently depends on the sensitivity of police officers and judges.

...Read the full article from spiked-online.com

Offsite: Giving offence is both inevitable and often necessary in a plural society

25th March 2018. See  article from theguardian.com by Kenan Malik

Even the Guardian can find a space for disquiet about the injustice in the Scottish Count Dankula case.

Joshua North, who was prosecuted by Humberside police with the help of counter-terror experts, has been cleared by a jury over his satirical Facebook post where he called for national batter gypos day. A costs order in North's favour will be made.

North had responded on Facebook after national news reported that travellers had caused trouble in Cleethorpes. North said he made the statement to mock other people's 'hateful comments'.

North said the case had led to almost two years of hell for him and his family and noted that there was no investigation into my side of the story.

After he was cleared of inciting racial hatred Joshua North, from Cleethorpes, blasted the decision to prosecute him as political correctness gone mad.  He said:

I told the police, if you check all my other Facebook posts, it indicates that I'm very friendly to immigrants, other races and religions.

The decision to prosecute was criticised by North's lawyer who said the case had been brought with 'the full force of the resources of the counter-terrorism unit'. He said:

I am disappointed that the prosecution, who had the full force of the resources of the counter-terrorism unit behind them, did not at any point consider what kind of a person Joshua actually is.

Had they spent any time thinking about him, looking at his other posts or even considering the possibility of another interpretation other than that they fixed upon, it would have occurred to them that Joshua is the last person to incite racial hatred.

Instead, they fixed on an interpretation and they refused to consider any other possibility even after he had advanced his position in interview.

What we have is a young, kind, decent, liberal, broad-minded man who works hard and who has been put through hell.

After the case concluded, Humberside Police defended its decision to charge North, stating it takes hate crime allegations seriously.

A police unit to censor online insult and hate crime has been launched by London's mayor, Sadiq Khan.

The Online Hate Crime Hub is made up of five Met police officers who will try to identify, prevent and investigate online abuse. Sadiq Khan said officers would work with community 'experts' to develop the police's understanding of online hate .

The unit will cost £1.7m over two years. It is being funded by the Met and the Mayor's Office for Policing And Crime (MOPAC), with £452,000 also being contributed by the Home Office Police Innovation Fund.I

Any online insult and hate crimes on the likes of Twitter and Facebook will be looked into by the unit.

City Hall said discussions were also under way with social media companies to develop appropriate online sanctions for perpetrators of online hate .

Offsite Comment: All hail Sadiq Khan's new Ministry of Truth

29th April 2017 See article from spiked-online.com by Guy Burchall

This is a deeply sinister and censorious move. But what's most worrying is that for something to be labelled a hate crime , it only has to be labelled as such by the alleged victim.

...Read the full article from spiked-online.com

Social media users who encourage flame wars or retweet the doxing (revealing identifying information with malicious intent) of others are set to be punished more severely by British prosecutors.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)'s latest Guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent via social media target doxing, online mobs, fake social media profiles and other social media misbehaviour.

Also included in the latest version of the guidance is a specific encouragement to prosecutors to charge those who egg on others to break social media speech laws. Those who encourage others to commit a communications offence may be charged with encouraging an offence under the Serious Crime Act 2007, warns the guidance.

In a Kafka-esque twist, the guidance also includes this chilling line, discussing how prosecutors can prove the criminal offence of sending a grossly offensive message, under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003:

The offence is committed by sending the message. There is no requirement that any person sees the message or be offended by it.

Another nasty touch is that the CPS will allow victims to decide whether crimes are deemed to be 'hate crimes' and therefore attract more severe penalties. The CPS policy consultation defines race/religion hate crimes as follows:

Crimes involving hostility on the basis of race or religion

The reporting and prosecution of hate crime are shaped by two definitions; one is subjective and is based on the perception of the victim and the other is objective and relies on supporting evidence.

Both the subjective and objective definitions refer to hostility, not hatred. There is no statutory definition of hostility and the everyday or dictionary definition is applied, encompassing a broad spectrum of behaviour.

We have an agreed definition with the police for identifying and flagging cases involving hostility on the basis of race or religion. The joint definition is:

Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or religion or perceived race or religion.

The equivalent paragraph an disability hate crime adds explaining how the CPS has waved its hands and extended the scope:

This definition is wider than the statutory definition, to ensure we capture all relevant cases:

The guidance also encourages prosecutors to treat social media crimes committed against persons serving the public more seriously than nasty words directed against their fellow members of the public. Similarly, coordinated attacks by different people should also attract greater prosecutorial attention.

Prosecution in all cases is said to be less likely if swift and effective action has been taken by the suspect and/or others, for example service providers, to remove the communication .

Maria Miller, the Conservative former culture secretary and equalities minister has claimed that Britain needs better internet laws to stop online abuse that may be creating a nightmare for society in future.

Now the chair of the Commons women and equalities committee, she said the government needed to wake up to some of the problems the internet was creating, from vile abuse on social media to easy sharing of violent explicit images among young people.

In 2014, ministers quadrupled the maximum six-month prison term for internet insults to two years. The time limit for prosecutions has also been extended to three years.

Miller now says that the laws around insult and harm on the internet could be updated further and internet companies could do more to act against threatening and abusive material online. She claimed:

We need better laws and we need better enforcement. Government needs to stop allowing internet providers from hiding behind arguments about the protection of free speech.

The problem is rooted in the fact that many internet companies won't acknowledge that they can challenge, and should stop, criminal behaviour, saying they are just like the postal service and can't help that people use their services for criminal activity, that it's not their problem. It is their problem and we need to sit up, take notice and realise that we are creating a nightmare future.

People are unleashing their inner venom in a way I just do not think is healthy for society. We have got to have an honest debate about this. Too many people in government are saying it is all about freedom of speech and it is not.

The chief constable of Essex has called for new legislation to tackle an unimagined scale of online abuse that he clains is threatening to overwhelm the police service. Stephen Kavanagh argues it is necessary to consolidate and simplify offences committed online to improve the chance of justice for tens of thousands of victims:

There are crimes now taking place -- the malicious use of intimate photographs for example -- which we never would have imagined as an offence when I was a PC in the 80s. It's not just the nature of it, it is the sheer volume.

The levels of abuse that now take place within the internet are on a level we never really expected. If we did try to deal with all of it we would clearly be swamped.

No police chief would claim the way we deliver police services has sufficiently adapted to the new threat and harms that the internet brings

A group of cross-party MPs will introduce a private member's bill into parliament on Wednesday to update the law on cyber-enabled crime. The draft legislation, being introduced by Liz Saville Roberts, a Plaid Cymru MP, calls for a review and consolidation into one act of all the legislation currently being used against digital crime. It also calls for new powers to outlaw the use of spyware or webcams on digital devices without permission.

There are currently more than 30 pieces of legislation currently being used against online crimes. These include the Contempt of Court Act 1981, Protection from Harassment Act 1997, Malicious Communications Act 1988, Communications Act 2003, Offences Against the Person Act 1861, Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Computer Misuse Act 1990, and the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

[What a nightmare it would be if the police got involved a wider remit of online insult. Injustice would surely prevail with the police always taking sides with the complainant. People would be quick to use false or trivial claims to settle scores with the ability to get people into serious trouble for minor insults or political incorrectness etc].

Last year, 1,209 people were found guilty of offences of internet insult under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.

It is a crime under the Communications Act to send by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other material that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character .

Statistics released by the Ministry of 'Justice' (MoJ) show that 1,501 defendants were prosecuted under the law last year - including 70 juveniles - while another 685 were cautioned. Of those convicted, 155 were jailed - compared to just seven a decade before. The average custodial sentence was 2.2 months.

The MoJ figures also revealed a rise in the number of convictions under the Malicious Communications Act, which states that it is an offence to send a threatening, offensive or indecent letter, electronic communication or article with the intent to cause distress or anxiety.

So in a week where the police ARE threatening to jail innocent kids for sexting, they are asking parents not to teach their kids that the police will take them away if they are naughty.

Many an exasperated parent has told their misbehaving child to be good or the police will put them in prison. But now one police force has issued a poster urging adults not to use this common threat. The poster from Durham Constabulary reads:

Parents. Please don't tell your children that we will take them off to jail if they are bad. We want them to run to us if they are scared, not be scared of us. Thank You.

However the kids would be better advised to keep clear of the police lest they get locked up for sexting, bad taste jokes, or even just insulting posts on Twitter or Facebook.

For example jailing them for internet insults

25th May 2015. See  article from  dailymail.co.uk

The number of prosecutions of internet trolls has soared eightfold in the last 10 years, according to new figures. More than 1,200 people were found guilty of offences under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 last year compared with 143 in 2004.

The law states it is illegal to send by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other material that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character .

Statistics released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) show that 1,501 defendants were prosecuted under the law last year - including 70 juveniles - while another 685 were cautioned.

Of those convicted, 155 were jailed - compared with just seven a decade before- and the average custodial sentence was 2.2 months.

A young man has been arrested after allegedly tweeting a bad taste joke about the Glasgow bin lorry crash.

The man reportedly handed himself in to police after a number of whinges were made about the joke. He is alleged to have written:

So a bin lorry has crashed into 100 people in Glasgow eh, probably the most trash its ever picked up in one day that.

Northumbria Police made the ludicrous claim that the joke was 'a malicious communication', and the persecution has not stopped at the arrest. The police investigation is continuing and the victim has been bailed pending further inquiries.

Internet insults could lead to two years in jail under new laws, 'Justice' Secretary Chris Grayling has said. He proposes that magistrates should be able to pass serious cases on to crown courts under the new measures.

He told the Mail on Sunday quadrupling the current maximum six-month term showed his determination to take a stand against a baying cyber-mob

These internet trolls are cowards who are poisoning our national life. No-one would permit such venom in person, so there should be no place for it on social media. That is why we are determined to quadruple the current six-month sentence.

As the terrible case of Chloe Madeley showed last week, people are being abused online in the most crude and degrading fashion.

This is a law to combat cruelty - and marks our determination to take a stand against a baying cyber-mob. We must send out a clear message: if you troll you risk being behind bars for two years.

Those who subject others to sexually offensive, verbally abusive or threatening material online are currently prosecuted in magistrates' courts under the Malicious Communications Act, with a maximum prison sentence of six months. More serious cases could go to crown court under the proposals, where the maximum sentence would be extended.

The law change is to be made as an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill going through Parliament.

Emma Carr, director of Big Brother Watch, responded to the proposed new penalties:

The Justice Secretary should be focusing his efforts on incidents where real harm may be caused, not casting the net wider for anything that could be deemed offensive.

The Crown Prosecution Service and the police have completely failed to properly use the existing harassment law, which itself would address the actions of anyone who poses a serious threat.

The victims of serious abuse online, or indeed offline, do not need headline grabbing policies. They need definitive action to ensure that the police know what the law is when a compliant is made. It is that action which will keep them safe, not attempts to legally blur the line between illegal behaviour and being generally offensive.

Offsite Comment: Trolling 'is' a free-speech issue, and always has been

22nd October 2014. See  article from  spiked-online.com by Tom Slater

The UK justice secretary's announcement on Sunday that the jail sentence for abusive online trolling is set to be quadrupled, from a maximum of six months to two years, should send a chill down the spine of all freedom-loving individuals. The fact that a panic over the phlegm-spitting, misspelled missives of a few keyboard warriors has laid the path for heavy-handed state intervention into our communications sets a dangerous precedent for the future of free expression online.

...Read the full article .

Note that the increase in sentences for internet insult is not actually a new addition to the bill, the repressive measure has been included from the beginning.

A House of Lords Communications Committee, chaired by Lord Best, will conduct a short inquiry into the legal and regulatory framework around social media and communications offences, such as one-to-one targeted harassment and trolling .

It is a problem that is in the news on a regular basis, and yet many people do not seem to realise that communications sent via social media are capable of amounting to criminal offences under a range of statutes. These include the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Malicious Communications Act 1988, and the Communications Act 2003.

The Committee will be holding two evidence sessions, which will look at whether the legislation on the issue of social media and communications offences is appropriate and fit for purpose or would benefit from clarification; whether the line between free speech and protection of victims is clear; and more generally, whether the steps which have already been taken to deal with these problems are sufficient, or whether further action is necessary.

On a wider note, the Committee sees this piece of work as an integral part of pursuing its interest in the way changes in media and technology are likely to affect consumers' and citizens' behaviour and the way in which the legal and policy debate needs to respond. Questions

Questions likely to be raised in this inquiry include:

• Whether the law currently covering offences related to social media and communications offences is capable of adapting to the way in which people behave, given the speed of changes in technology.
• If there are areas of overlap or gaps in the range of legislation covering social media and communications offences, which means that categorising the offence is not always clear.
• Whether the sentences handed out for social media and communications offences are known, consistent and appropriate and, more generally, whether other approaches, such as restorative justice and education, might be more effective.
• How, in responding to these issues, reform to the current package of legislation can strike an effective balance between victim protection and freedom of expression.

On 30 April, two days after teacher Ann Maguire was stabbed to death by a pupil in Leeds , Jake Newsome, a 21-year-old man who had himself attended a secondary school on the other side of the city, posted on his Facebook page: Personally im glad that teacher got stabbed up, feel sorry for the kid@ he shoulda pissed on her too .

Thats not very nice reads the first of 37 comments on his post. Others soon chipped in, addressing him by his nickname: Greeny come on! You're better than that wrote one. Greeny seriously that's harsh wrote another. Greeny, not sure you should be saying this stuff on facebook man -- people get in trouble for this kind of stuff .

A few days later, after his post had been shared more than 2,000 times, West Yorkshire police arrested and charged Newsome under the 2003 Communications Act with having sent by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature . Last week Newsome was jailed for six weeks, after pleading guilty, with the judge quoting his post back to him and saying: I can think of little that could be more upsetting or offensive.

...Read the full article

The government is supporting calls for harsher penalties for internet insults. Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has backed Conservative MP Angie Bray's demands for changes to the law.

According to the Evening Standard , Grayling agreed that the legislation needed to be tightened to protect victims from malicious comments being directed at them via social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Offences under the Malicious Communications Act currently only carry prison sentences that are no longer than six months, because such cases are heard at magistrates' courts. The proposed amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, which will be discussed in Parliament on Thursday, could change that, presumably by allowing Crown Court scale punishments.

Comment: If we want to live in a society without offence we will live in a society without free speech

27th March 2013. See  article from  indexoncensorship.org

Kirsty Hughes, CEO of Index on Censorship, said:

Index is deeply concerned at the government's apparent intention to deepen the criminal penalties for grossly offensive communications sent through the internet or social media. Just last year, the then Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer put out a very sensible set of guidelines to limit the number of arrests for social media posts that may be offensive to some but did not constitute a criminal offence. Now we are going backwards. Offence is a subjective concept and if we want to live in a society without offence we will live in a society without free speech.

Offsite Comment: Free speech will suffer if politicians get tough on offensive tweets

27th March 2013. See  article from  theguardian.com by Robert Sharp

Thanks to online abuse, MPs may be about to remove our right to be offensive. But giving offence is a vital part of democracy

...Read the full article

A man was subjected to eight hours of questioning by police and had his computer seized for three weeks just for making a few tasteless Nelson Mandela jokes on the internet.

Neil Phillips says he was also finger-printed and DNA-swabbed after officers received complaints about what he insists were harmless gags, eg:

My PC takes so long to shut down I've decided to call it Nelson Mandela.

He explained:

You can question the taste, but they're not hateful. I told the police they got plenty of likes . What happened to freedom of speech?

The disgraceful Liberal Democrat Councillor Tim Jones was so 'outraged' by the one-liners, aired at a time when Mandela was critically ill, that he made an official complaint. He claimed:

They are vile and deeply offensive, anti-Muslim, anti-disabled.

Staffordshire Police declined to go into detail about the nature of their over the top actions against Phillips. But a spokesman confirmed the arrest and said:

When he answered bail on September 30, he was informed that there would be no further action based on CPS decision of there being insufficient evidence to support a prosecution.

An internet user who used Facebook posts to mock the search for murdered schoolgirl April Jones has been branded absolutely appalling by a judge.

Gordon Mullen was condemned by Scots Sheriff Iona McDonald for his remarks on Facebook two days after the five-year-old went missing near her home in Machynlleth in October 2012.

He made a series of posts in a three-way conversation:

His first post said: Hopefully the search for the missing girl doesn't go on like the Madeleine McCann saga and she just turns up dead.

Mullen then made a comment regarding Jimmy Savile, adding LMAO (laughing my arse off).

He also made a remark involving April Jones and Austrian sex criminal Josef Fritzel.

Mullen admitted breaching the Communications Act after his earlier arrest for failing to appear in court. Mullen was given 120 hours unpaid work.

A spate of supposedly 'offensive' Twitter remarks on the Glasgow helicopter tragedy has sparked a public 'outcry' as it emerged a teenager was arrested for posting sectarian and racist comments about the disaster.

Police Scotland confirmed that a 16-year-old had been detained for posting 'sickening' jibes in the wake of the Clutha pub catastrophe. The teenager was arrested on Sunday and held in custody in connection with remarks made on a social networking site following Friday's tragedy, police said.

Update: Katie Hopkins under fire for throwaway joke

5th December 2013. See  article from  huffingtonpost.co.uk . Thanks to Phantom

Katie hopkins has built a career on brash utterances and saying what everyone else is thinking . But now, more than 44,000 easily offended people have signed a petition calling for former Apprentice contestant to be banned from any future TV appearances.

The former reality TV star turned professional contrarian and HuffPost blogger issued an apology after cracking a joke on Twitter about life expectancy in Scotland following the fatal helicopter crash on the banks of the Clyde in Glasgow. She had joked on Twitter:

Life expectancy in Scotland is 59.5. Goodness me. That lot will do anything to avoid working until retirement.

She later apologised:

My tweet on Scotland was directly related to this article: https://t.co/yijMFVbJp7 . I aologise to those I offended. It was poor timing.

A spate of supposedly 'offensive' Twitter remarks on the Glasgow helicopter tragedy has sparked a public 'outcry' as it emerged a teenager was arrested for posting sectarian and racist comments about the disaster.

Police Scotland confirmed that a 16-year-old had been detained for posting 'sickening' jibes in the wake of the Clutha pub catastrophe. The teenager was arrested on Sunday and held in custody in connection with remarks made on a social networking site following Friday's tragedy, police said.