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Japan to start jailing people for online insults
- 8bitsrule 4y ago"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." Insult?
- yesbut 4y agoBelieve it or not, straight to jail.
- the_only_law 4y agoThat was a $2200 mistake.
- yesbut 4y agoThis isn't a start. Its an increase of the maximum prison time of an existing law. It is a response to the bullying of Hana Kimura that led to her committing suicide. Two men connected to bullying her were fined 9,000 yen. This law will be abused even if it had good intentions.
- uxp100 4y ago9000 yen? It does seem like if you’re going to have the law in the first place a fine that cheap sort of undercuts it. The crime enters the news, and then everyone sees the fine is less than the cost of a special edition fancy blu ray of her wrestling.
- yesbut 4y agoJust wait until someone indults an elected official.
- bamboozled 4y ago‘Elected official’, appointed by default
- bamboozled 4y agoThis will really only help to secure Japans one party rule in my opinion. If it was really about peoples feelings, Japan would do a lot more for peoples mental health. Posted about this also a few weeks back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31741219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31741219
- plaguepilled 4y agoThere should be some actual culpability for making decisions this obviously wrong.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- desindol 4y agoHow is it wrong? If you are a public figure getting bombarded with death wishes/threats or vile comments about how someone will kill and mutilate your family what are you supposed to do just take it? There has to be consequences for people like that, like there are in real life.
- thekingofrome 4y agoThe issue, as the article says, is that the law doesn't define what an insult is. That means that a death threat or saying "you're stupid" could potentially both be prosecuted under this law.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoThat stems from the fact that any definition of an insult will be either incomplete or incorrect.
- brutusborn 4y agoNot saying you're wrong, but why is this a fact? Surely for a legal purpose you could make a pretty solid definition. If you want it to be fully black and white, you could enumerate all 'banned' insults.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago> why is this a fact? It is a rhetorical flourish, but my gut says that language is complex enough to craft statements that both meet the legal definition but aren't insults, or are insulting but don't meet the legal definition. I'm also discounting circular definitions like insults are statements that are insulting which are tautological, but don't reveal any extra clarity. > you could enumerate all 'banned' insults I'd argue that this is not possible due to the set of insults having at least countably infinite cardinality.
- thekingofrome 4y agoHere in Germany we once had a guy have his apartment raided by 6 cops because he wrote a tweet to a local politician that said "You're such a dick". That's all he said.
- bamboozled 4y agoDo you have some article related to this I could read ? Germany is really similar to Japan in that it’s exterior seems very different to what’s going on internally.
- thekingofrome 4y agoI don't know of any in English; here's a German one. https://m.tagesspiegel.de/politik/pimmelgate-um-andy-grote-twitter-user-beleidigt-hamburger-innensenator-hausdurchsuchung/27595716.html https://m.tagesspiegel.de/politik/pimmelgate-um-andy-grote-t... I
- egberts1 4y agoEnglish version, thanks to Google translate https://m-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/politik/pimmelgate-um-andy-grote-twitter-user-beleidigt-hamburger-innensenator-hausdurchsuchung/27595716.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://m-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/politik/pimmelgate-...
- __turbobrew__ 4y agoIf anything, politicians should be the first people you are protected to critisize. Politicians work for you — the voting citizen — and if they are doing a poor job you have the right to let them know. It is frankly insane to watch the frog boil in places where you can have your house raided for insulting someone online. There is a wave of government authoritarianism in many places around the globe, and many citizens are happy with these growing nanny states.
- hGfbjHzuHv 4y agoIt was more like „you’re such a wiener“. The most harmless way of referring to a penis. Pimmelgate made it to Wikipedia.
- norwalkbear 4y agoEvery law gets abused by politicians instead of it's original intent - Norwalk's Law
- kirykl 4y agoThis is this just criminalizing libel or does the prosecutor need to prove someone has been offended ?
- silverpepsi 4y agoThe plain text exactly contradictions your question "The law says an insult means demeaning someone without a specific fact about them — as opposed to defamation"