6 ms·

Yeah, absolutely no doubt that the court systems and judges are so stupid that they would put someone out of business for clicking a link. Absolutely no doubt.

by orf 8y ago

Yeah, absolutely no doubt that the court systems and judges are so stupid that they would put someone out of business for clicking a link. Absolutely no doubt. Will totally happen. In the UK you follow the spirit of the law, not the exact wording. That means no, clicking a link that redirects you to some shady site does not mean the SWAT team are going to knock down your door and arrest you. Also the burden of proof generally always lies with the prosecution. It being "abused" is called "making a case" and bears no relation to this law at all. If the case is shoddy, the defense will absolutely destroy it.

netsharc 8y ago
Well, they did convict that guy who tweeted about b___ing an airp__t once. Article about him overturning the conviction: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-19009344 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-19009344 , but the fact that a court convicted him in the first place means that the first court was convinced he broke some law.
- orf 8y ago
  He was fined 385 quid. That's a slap on the wrist to say "don't waste our time with jokes about blowing up airports". And yeah these things are a side effect of common law which which is pretty subjective around things of bad taste. And, as your story shows, the courts worked it out.
  - striking 8y ago
    He had to pay nearly £1000 out of pocket, had lost his job, and then had to fight his conviction for a year and a half in three different appeals. For a tweet immediately considered not credible as a threat by the people to whom it was directed, read a week after it was sent. He wasn't just fined, this apparently caused him to not be able to receive work and gain a criminal record. Even the rest of the CPS didn't want to continue along with the case but the director of public prosecution pushed it (https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/29/paul-chambers-twitter-joke-airport https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/29/paul-chambers-tw...). The courts didn't work it out, he did, after receiving an outpouring of support (social and monetary) from British comedians. I don't understand your sentiment in the slightest.
- dazc 8y ago
  Most people are wise enough to know you don't mention the B word in an airport, just as it's not a good idea to make sarcastic remarks to immigration officers when they are checking your passport. The guy deserved to be inconvenienced for stupidity, if nothing else.
  - geofft 8y ago
    Inconveniencing people for their stupidity is not a legitimate use of the government's monopoly on violence. It might be an acceptable side effect in pursuit of a legitimate end, but it is not an end in itself.
    - orf 8y ago
      > Inconveniencing people for their stupidity is not a legitimate use of the government's monopoly on violence. It absolutely and very clearly is, especially when that stupidity ends up costing the taxpayer money. Not wearing a seatbelt is stupidity, and people not wearing it should be inconvenienced.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Are you serious? What money does making a joke on Twitter cost? The money was spent because they chose to prosecute it, not the other way around.
        orf 8y ago
        In what world don't the police spend any time or money investigating bomb threats?
        netsharc 8y ago
        A world where any sane person would realize the "threats" are made in jest and not to be taken seriously. But oh well, that's not this world, where there is a lack of sanity and too many humorless absolutists like you, who obviously are dead certain that "You can't joke about that!".
AllegedAlec 8y ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921
Libbum 8y ago
I'm not in complete disagreement to your sentiment. I think this will be the case most of the time. There are plenty of singular cases where wording rather than spirit have been used to make examples though - mostly to the detriment of personal freedoms. Markus Meechan for example.
OscarCunningham 8y ago
> In the UK you follow the spirit of the law, not the exact wording. The problem is that the government is taking this as a licence to make laws overly broad. Their policy seems to be to make everything illegal and hope that the courts sort it out. EDIT: Also, it allows selective enforcement. I bet "the spirit of the law" turns out to mean that I can view ISIS propaganda but Muslims can't.
- DanBC 8y ago
  Why is this law overly broad? The accused has to seek out terrorist material, has to download it knowing that it's terrorist material, and has to not be downloading it for their work as a journalist or researcher. Have you read the law?
  - OscarCunningham 8y ago
    It shouldn't be illegal to view terrorist propaganda simply because of idle curiosity. In fact, people in this thread admit to doing so. Should they be punished?
jerf 8y ago
This is just one example of what the UK police seem to have time for lately: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arrested-children-calling-transgender-woman-man.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arre... There's been a torrent of this sort of thing lately coming out of the UK; this is not a one-off sort of thing. I know how HN feels about the Daily Mail, so I tried to find this story on the BBC. Couldn't. If someone's google-fu is better than mine, I'd be much obliged for a link. If nobody else finds it either, well, I leave the implications up to the reader. I have no confidence in the police's discretion right now.
- tom_ 8y ago
  Torrent? Well, if you read the Daily Mail it really might seem like it. I take it you must live here, on account of your concern about our society, though you presumably haven't been here long, because you haven't figured out step 1, which is ignoring everything you read in the Daily Mail. (Their agenda is simple: get old people to click on the links, fulminate, and forward on to ten friends, putting as many eyes as possible in front of all that advertising that the Daily Mail's customers are paying for.) That will help make it clearer that the apparent torrent is much more like the trickle, if even that, that you will see in your daily life. Breaking that first rule, I do note the Daily Mail article is good enough to mention the phrase "campaign of targeted harassment", which (if you ask me) rather makes it sound like there was a bit more involved than simply somebody calling her a he, something that judging by her Twitter feed she must be pretty used to by now. In fact, on her Twitter feed (I found this by googling her name. I've always been pretty good with Google): https://twitter.com/flyinglawyer73/status/1095310933637976065 https://twitter.com/flyinglawyer73/status/109531093363797606... - summary is apparently that she complained to police because of somebody releasing private information, and not because she was referred to as he (though I'm sure that was mentioned as evidence of malicious intent); the arrest was entirely at police's discretion; there's some kind of ongoing investigation. This may well give you no further confidence in the police, but the ongoing investigation (and injunction - though we're given no details about what it covers) may explain why the BBC haven't printed anything. (There's more in her recent tweets, including as many of the predictable responses, from exactly the people you'd expect, that you can be bothered to trawl through.) I don't like trawling through this muck, nor especially do I like dragging it in here like this - but I even more dislike seeing the Daily Mail's shite promulgated.
abc-xyz 8y ago
A 23 year old EE student with no criminal record (not that it should matter) was jailed for 6 months for stealing a £3.5 bottle of water.. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London-riots-Lidl-water-thief-jailed-for-six-months.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London...)
iainmerrick 8y ago
Yeah, absolutely no doubt that the court systems and judges are so stupid that they would put someone out of business for clicking a link. Absolutely no doubt. Will totally happen. Why not? Imagine this scenario: the police strongly suspect that person X has some kind of terrorist involvement. They have no solid evidence. However, they are able to show that person X once viewed extremist propaganda. So they prosecute X for what they can prove -- viewing propaganda -- telling themselves, based on their wider investigation and inadmissible evidence, that they’re prosecuting a terrorist. But what if they’re wrong? Even though they’re trying to follow the spirit of the law, they could still end up prosecuting an otherwise innocent person. What defence does X have?

by orf 8y ago

netsharc 8y ago

Well, they did convict that guy who tweeted about b___ing an airp__t once. Article about him overturning the conviction: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-19009344 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-19009344 , but the fact that a court convicted him in the first place means that the first court was convinced he broke some law.

orf 8y ago
He was fined 385 quid. That's a slap on the wrist to say "don't waste our time with jokes about blowing up airports". And yeah these things are a side effect of common law which which is pretty subjective around things of bad taste. And, as your story shows, the courts worked it out.
- striking 8y ago
  He had to pay nearly £1000 out of pocket, had lost his job, and then had to fight his conviction for a year and a half in three different appeals. For a tweet immediately considered not credible as a threat by the people to whom it was directed, read a week after it was sent. He wasn't just fined, this apparently caused him to not be able to receive work and gain a criminal record. Even the rest of the CPS didn't want to continue along with the case but the director of public prosecution pushed it (https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/29/paul-chambers-twitter-joke-airport https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/29/paul-chambers-tw...). The courts didn't work it out, he did, after receiving an outpouring of support (social and monetary) from British comedians. I don't understand your sentiment in the slightest.
dazc 8y ago
Most people are wise enough to know you don't mention the B word in an airport, just as it's not a good idea to make sarcastic remarks to immigration officers when they are checking your passport. The guy deserved to be inconvenienced for stupidity, if nothing else.
- geofft 8y ago
  Inconveniencing people for their stupidity is not a legitimate use of the government's monopoly on violence. It might be an acceptable side effect in pursuit of a legitimate end, but it is not an end in itself.
  - orf 8y ago
    > Inconveniencing people for their stupidity is not a legitimate use of the government's monopoly on violence. It absolutely and very clearly is, especially when that stupidity ends up costing the taxpayer money. Not wearing a seatbelt is stupidity, and people not wearing it should be inconvenienced.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Are you serious? What money does making a joke on Twitter cost? The money was spent because they chose to prosecute it, not the other way around.
      - orf 8y ago
        In what world don't the police spend any time or money investigating bomb threats?
        netsharc 8y ago
        A world where any sane person would realize the "threats" are made in jest and not to be taken seriously. But oh well, that's not this world, where there is a lack of sanity and too many humorless absolutists like you, who obviously are dead certain that "You can't joke about that!".

AllegedAlec 8y ago

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921

Libbum 8y ago

I'm not in complete disagreement to your sentiment. I think this will be the case most of the time. There are plenty of singular cases where wording rather than spirit have been used to make examples though - mostly to the detriment of personal freedoms. Markus Meechan for example.

OscarCunningham 8y ago

> In the UK you follow the spirit of the law, not the exact wording. The problem is that the government is taking this as a licence to make laws overly broad. Their policy seems to be to make everything illegal and hope that the courts sort it out. EDIT: Also, it allows selective enforcement. I bet "the spirit of the law" turns out to mean that I can view ISIS propaganda but Muslims can't.

DanBC 8y ago
Why is this law overly broad? The accused has to seek out terrorist material, has to download it knowing that it's terrorist material, and has to not be downloading it for their work as a journalist or researcher. Have you read the law?
- OscarCunningham 8y ago
  It shouldn't be illegal to view terrorist propaganda simply because of idle curiosity. In fact, people in this thread admit to doing so. Should they be punished?

jerf 8y ago

This is just one example of what the UK police seem to have time for lately: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arrested-children-calling-transgender-woman-man.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arre... There's been a torrent of this sort of thing lately coming out of the UK; this is not a one-off sort of thing. I know how HN feels about the Daily Mail, so I tried to find this story on the BBC. Couldn't. If someone's google-fu is better than mine, I'd be much obliged for a link. If nobody else finds it either, well, I leave the implications up to the reader. I have no confidence in the police's discretion right now.

tom_ 8y ago
Torrent? Well, if you read the Daily Mail it really might seem like it. I take it you must live here, on account of your concern about our society, though you presumably haven't been here long, because you haven't figured out step 1, which is ignoring everything you read in the Daily Mail. (Their agenda is simple: get old people to click on the links, fulminate, and forward on to ten friends, putting as many eyes as possible in front of all that advertising that the Daily Mail's customers are paying for.) That will help make it clearer that the apparent torrent is much more like the trickle, if even that, that you will see in your daily life. Breaking that first rule, I do note the Daily Mail article is good enough to mention the phrase "campaign of targeted harassment", which (if you ask me) rather makes it sound like there was a bit more involved than simply somebody calling her a he, something that judging by her Twitter feed she must be pretty used to by now. In fact, on her Twitter feed (I found this by googling her name. I've always been pretty good with Google): https://twitter.com/flyinglawyer73/status/1095310933637976065 https://twitter.com/flyinglawyer73/status/109531093363797606... - summary is apparently that she complained to police because of somebody releasing private information, and not because she was referred to as he (though I'm sure that was mentioned as evidence of malicious intent); the arrest was entirely at police's discretion; there's some kind of ongoing investigation. This may well give you no further confidence in the police, but the ongoing investigation (and injunction - though we're given no details about what it covers) may explain why the BBC haven't printed anything. (There's more in her recent tweets, including as many of the predictable responses, from exactly the people you'd expect, that you can be bothered to trawl through.) I don't like trawling through this muck, nor especially do I like dragging it in here like this - but I even more dislike seeing the Daily Mail's shite promulgated.

abc-xyz 8y ago

A 23 year old EE student with no criminal record (not that it should matter) was jailed for 6 months for stealing a £3.5 bottle of water.. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London-riots-Lidl-water-thief-jailed-for-six-months.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London...)

iainmerrick 8y ago

Yeah, absolutely no doubt that the court systems and judges are so stupid that they would put someone out of business for clicking a link. Absolutely no doubt. Will totally happen. Why not? Imagine this scenario: the police strongly suspect that person X has some kind of terrorist involvement. They have no solid evidence. However, they are able to show that person X once viewed extremist propaganda. So they prosecute X for what they can prove -- viewing propaganda -- telling themselves, based on their wider investigation and inadmissible evidence, that they’re prosecuting a terrorist. But what if they’re wrong? Even though they’re trying to follow the spirit of the law, they could still end up prosecuting an otherwise innocent person. What defence does X have?