Internet Trolling...should it be a criminal offence

[ginnyfizz]

Good points, Vagrant0.

 

@ Daedalus, And that's why I have said that there is no need for an extra law, the existing law already covers any trolling serious enough to merit action, ie the sort of cases I outline where the person trolled suffers a tangible loss/serious consequences.

 

Enforcement is another matter, in my case one protagonist was in another country and, as you, Vagrant and HeyYou rightly suggest, would have been difficult to take action against. Although it is not impossible where the potential offence is criminal as opposed to civil, getting someone before a court would be difficult. Obtaining restraining injunctions, however, might well be an option, even if the protagonists are in different countries.

 

You mention libel in the case of that unfortunate paediatrician. However it is extremely costly to bring defamation actions in the UK, and nigh impossible for your average man or woman in the street. Especially if you have been run out of town and had to leave your job and your home. That is why I would support some tweaks to the existing laws that would make it easier for people who have been trolled to that level of seriousness to bring libel actions. Maybe supporting the idea of lawyers taking the cases on a contingency basis like in the USA.

[JimboUK]

More idiocy from our great and good, how these people find themselves in a position of power boggles the mind.

 

1. It assumes the website is in the UK.

2. It assumes the Website owner actually has the correct I.P.

3. It assumes the website owner will bother to check that someone has been wronged before handing over details.

4. It assumes the person hurling the abuse is the troll and not the victim reacting, we could easily end up with the troll being given the details of their victim.

5. It assumes the victim will spend the ten of thousands of pounds required for a civil suit rather than just sending their mates round to deal with the troll, a verbal spat could end in violence thanks to this ridiculous law.

6. It may well break Article 8 of the human rights act, the troll can look forward to a nice payout.

7. There will be statutory defences of truth and honest opinion so "It's my opinion that you're a ****" will be fine while "You're a ****" won't be.

8. We already have a law to deal with them, the Communications Act 2003.

 

Our parliament has a fine tradition of passing unworkable idiotic laws, this is yet another. With any luck it will be killed off in the lords, the lords may be unelected but time and again they've saved us from the stupidity of the elected chamber.

[marharth]

One way to block people entirely would to not give out your information online. Staying anonymous is a nice thing.

 

Might be a bit inconsiderate, but I find it extremely stupid when people use sites like facebook and then complain when people harass you. Don't post personal information online in a public place if you don't want to be harassed.

 

In extreme situations, its already covered by other laws that do not require enforcing the internet.

Edited August 3, 2012 by marharth

[JimboUK]

One way to block people entirely would to not give out your information online. Staying anonymous is a nice thing.

 

Might be a bit inconsiderate, but I find it extremely stupid when people use sites like facebook and then complain when people harass you. Don't post personal information online in a public place if you don't want to be harassed.

 

in extreme situations, its already covered by other laws that do not require enforcing the internet.

 

This is good point, I get a lot of abuse and even the odd the death threat via Twitter and Youtube but it doesn't matter because none of them know who I am. The only people online who know who I am are friends and those I've made financial transactions with.

[Nintii]

This is good point, I get a lot of abuse and even the odd the death threat via Twitter and Youtube but it doesn't matter because none of them know who I am. The only people online who know who I am are friends and those I've made financial transactions with.

 

That is exactly why I no longer put photographs of myself on the web (like I used to), or use my name and have limited my friends on FB to a mere handful of people I have known and trusted for years ... when asked I simply respond that I don't have FB or twitter or belong to any other social network.

I have only shared photo's with four people here on Nexus and that was ages ago and I'm sure those photo's are history by now.

That's one of the reasons I try to stay independant ... make sense ?

 

As a matter of fact between my father, older brother and myself, we decided to work together (literally) after my mom got sick and passed away to watch out for each other.

We did an entire clean up and deleted a number of our accounts on the web.

We run a business together but for the sake of anonymity we allow our father to pay the "personal" bills on our behalf .

And where we can we have created a company account with various stores and purchase through them.

I never take photographs of my vehicle, ever, ever, ever and publish them anywhere.

This is a horrible kind of lifestyle but a neccessary one.

 

I never give people my email account and use the business one 95% of the time, though I have a semi-private one that I sometimes divulge in rare cases to rare people.

I never open e-mails except from people I know, I never answer my mobile if the person calling has set there phone to "private".

My friends who have refused to reveal their numbers are endlessly frustrated with me because I WILL NOT ANSWER.

All of this to stay anonymous ...

 

Unfortunately the USA has dozens of websites that give away your private and confidential stuff, like who you are, your mom and dad, your street number and name, your suburb, your city, your house value, your education level even your criminal record if you have one.

Hell, I can even get a three dimensional view of your house so I'd know exactly how to break in to your place.

I find that horrifying ...

 

Let's face it, Trolls should be put down and the rights to personal privacy respected, not to mention decency should be maintained even when you cannot see the other person purely on the merit that they have a right to be respected as a person.

Edited August 3, 2012 by Nintii

[ginnyfizz]

One way to block people entirely would to not give out your information online. Staying anonymous is a nice thing.

 

Might be a bit inconsiderate, but I find it extremely stupid when people use sites like facebook and then complain when people harass you. Don't post personal information online in a public place if you don't want to be harassed.

 

In extreme situations, its already covered by other laws that do not require enforcing the internet.

 

Yes, that is more or less what the police said to me when advising me not to do Facebook, so I took their advice.

[Vagrant0]

One way to block people entirely would to not give out your information online. Staying anonymous is a nice thing.

 

Easier said than done since not everyone understands the two worlds concept, or can divorce the two. Aside from those that are into gaming and internet culture, most people who are online are online in order to achieve something offline. At any moment there are millions of people online trying to start relationships, make money, find work, or simply connect with family and friends. Most of those things don't work well when you can't attach a real name, official e-mail, or some real-world connection. And that's not even considering the more recent generation who has profile pages and e-mails setup through their schools as a way of improving communication, who probably didn't even get shown a proper video on internet safety.

 

 

And even if you are one who has completely compartmentalized their real life from their internet persona, having to pull your e-mail from your blog, and completely drop your accounts because of some jerkwad generally tends to be a bigger pain in the ass than that jerkwad has to deal with finding your new one. Nevermind if they managed to hack your e-mail account.

[JimboUK]

The likes of Facebook and Google don't help, they collect more and more information and assume that you're happy to share it. Google had my real name, I had to give it to them so I could use my card to buy stuff from the Android App Store for my phone, when they started this Google+ thing I signed up to have a look and found my real name in my profile with no obvious way to remove it. I'd already put a link from my Twitter profile to the Google+ one so any of the loons I have to put up with on Twitter could have easily found my real name. The only way to get my privacy back was to remove my card details, change my real name to my nickname in the my profile, sell the Android Phone because I could no longer pay for anything and buy an iPhone.

[Talwyn224]

tl;dr

 

Individuals need to be safe and free from persecution and harm both in the real world and the virtual one.

Trolls need to be ban-hammered.

 

Long version:

 

 

I firmly believe in a civil society and as such, see the internet as an extension of human society. Society are bound together by codes of conduct and the rule of law. This is what makes us "civil" in a word. Without such codes and laws we are going to be in, as what Thomas Hobbes described, as a "state of nature" where life is nasty, brutish and short. In many ways the internet can be viewed as a state of nature as it is still free from many laws and such.

 

The internet has been a marvellous revolution and I am constantly amazed at how quickly people have just become so accepting of it, how it has seamlessly integrated into many peoples lives that they barely think about this revolutionary invention which has changed, and will continue to change, humanity.

 

Yet with every benefit comes a cost.

 

The freedom and anonymity that the 'net enables has been a direct line into the darker regions of some peoples souls. The fact that a person can sit behind a keyboard and post any sort of hateful and hurtful drivel and suffer no repercussions is extremely worrisome. These human stains are not exercising free speech by any shape or measure and to shield them and their disgraceful actions with that epithet denigrates the entire concept of free speech. There is a marked difference between expressing a rational, if divergent argument/opinion and expressing libellous, slanderous, insulting, denigrating and hurtful remarks that are intended to wound the targets psyche. To argue otherwise is sheer b@llocks and I will never accept it.

 

It was Nintii earlier who quite eloquently got to the heart of this matter: if you went out in public and behaved and spoke to other people in the manner in which trolls do you would quickly feel the repercussions of your idiotic behaviour. Try being a troll in a pub to a stranger and see how far that gets you. At best you'll be told to bugger off, or it could also lead to you having your teeth knocked out by your irritated trolling target. This is why trolls feel safe. They know that no one can reach through the screen and respond to them physically and instead are left with the options of ignore, block, troll back [which rarely works unless your damned good at it] and disengage from the internet. All these options should never arise but then again, people shouldn't kill each other either but the world and humanity aren't perfect.

 

So I'm all for using the law and due process to shut down these human stains who think its fun to torment others. They are gutless cowards and I have absolutely no sympathy for them at all when the full force of the law is applied to them. I am wary of attempts to enact new laws which curtail the internet's freedoms and am also leery of democracies and politicians who cynically use this issue to erode our civil liberties. However when a persons actions infringe on the well being of another, even if it is through trolling, then there needs to be measures in place to deal with these instances. As mentioned earlier, there have been a few prominent cases highlighted in the media in which trolls have been brought to justice. Someone asked if they thought it was ok for a 18 year old to have to spend time in prison for trolling, IMO - yes. There is a reason why jail is as nasty as it is - it is there as a warning to us all that if you transgress society's code and laws then there are consequences and being sent to jail for being a troll could be one of them. It is harsh, of that there is no doubt and perhaps other penalties should be considered in lieu of jail time. Yet the point remains that those who break society's code need to be dealt with.

Edited August 4, 2012 by Talwyn224

[Talwyn224]

The likes of Facebook and Google don't help, they collect more and more information and assume that you're happy to share it. Google had my real name, I had to give it to them so I could use my card to buy stuff from the Android App Store for my phone, when they started this Google+ thing I signed up to have a look and found my real name in my profile with no obvious way to remove it. I'd already put a link from my Twitter profile to the Google+ one so any of the loons I have to put up with on Twitter could have easily found my real name. The only way to get my privacy back was to remove my card details, change my real name to my nickname in the my profile, sell the Android Phone because I could no longer pay for anything and buy an iPhone.

 

This is exactly why I refuse to participate in Facebook, Google + or any other social media that requires you to be "open" and sharing. [gags slightly] I also think people are incredibly naive in the way in which they do use social media and most have no idea of how vulnerable they are in releasing so much information about themselves or their friends and family.

 

I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to reveal any of my personal details to the wider world which also contains a small but significant minority of human stains who could use that information to rip me off or troll me. It almost worth creating an alias, another identity which you can use to create an on-line profile however the time it can take to create such an Id can be considerable and many nations law enforcement wings view such activity in a dim light.

 

If revealing my personal details on the web is what's required, I'll never buy an Android phone if that is the price I have to pay.