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Jean-Loup Richet: Free Speech? That’s Going to Cost You
December 2012 by Jean-Loup Richet
The internet as we know it today is a baby in terms of human history, and if you need a comparison it’s younger than Britney Spears and far more exciting. Originally it was seen by academics as a powerful tool for research and study; they could have had no inkling of the social monster and pornography-fest it has become today. Sixteen years ago, at a Labour party conference, Prime Minister Tony Blair was boasting that under a Labour government every school would have access to the internet and the ’information super-highway’ as if the two were separate entities; he made this promise with all the insouciance of a man who had learned of those terms that very morning.
With or without the help of politicians, almost every child and adult can indeed now access the internet through their smart phone, tablet, PC, laptop or console. We can educate ourselves, organize our lives, interact with like-minded people around the world to discuss every subject under the sun; even allow our idle computers to be used in vast research projects to further the advance of civilization. But what we mostly like to use the internet for is to insult each other.
On social media networks people abuse friends and family, former lovers, casual acquaintances and total strangers with complete equanimity. Every news report is analysed, digested and commented upon by an unseen army of peculiar, maladjusted and frequently bizarre individuals.
The British press have highlighted many extreme cases of abusive comments that have reached the courts this year, usually because they involve high profile sports persons, celebrities or just ’ordinary’ people involved in newsworthy stories; and the courts have not been slow to hand out what can only be described as draconian sentences.
They gave Liam Stacey fifty-six days in the hole for tweeting ’lol’, after the collapse of Fabrice Muamba during a football match. Fifty-six days? For ’lol’? Ok there was a bit more to it than that; after he was criticized online for his heartless attitude, Stacey followed it up with a torrent of vile, racist abuse. Even so, Stacey was not promoting violence or inciting a race war, he was just revealing his drunken stupidity to the world. [2]
Raising the bar was Matthew Woods who managed to earn himself twelve weeks in the slammer after posting obscene and reprehensible comments on Facebook about the abduction of April Jones and Madeline McCann; he also excused himself by claiming he was drunk at the time. His defence counsel, David Woods, claimed that he was ’genuinely regretful and remorseful’ but the ’Daily Mirror’ reported that he ’smirked’ as he left the court. [1]
Barry Thew didn’t even manage to get online; within hours of the deaths of two police women in Greater Manchester he had hand designed (scrawled on with black marker) a t-shirt that bore the legends, ’One less pig; perfect justice’, and ’killacopforfun.com’ (not a real site, I checked). Eight months of Her Majesty’s Pleasure for young Barry.
What these cases have in common is the impulsive nature of the offence, the speed of the conviction and the severity of the sentence. There can be no argument against the speed of conviction; we don’t need pettifogging cases like these clogging up the court system. The impulsiveness is obvious; these offenses were committed whilst the events they referred to were happening or had happened very recently. It’s the sentencing that is a little troubling as there seems to be little or no consistency. Let me point you to another high profile case; that of Tom Daley the British Olympic diver. Daley received abusive tweets during the Olympics which referred to his dead father, and also what could be construed as a death threat as in: ’i’m going to find you and i’m going to drown you in the pool you cocky twat...’ [4] [sic], from Reece Messer, who was later dealt with by Dorset police with a ’formal harassment warning.’ Quite right.
Look at these vile, yet rather pathetic individuals and compare them with what you might call the ’professional troll’. People like Sean Duffy who created fake email accounts and then spent an inordinate amount of time trawling social network sites for tributes to recently deceased people. Duffy spent time and effort in causing as much pain and suffering as possible to the recently bereaved, usually the parents of teenagers, some of whom had committed suicide. He gave no reason or excuse for his behaviour other than that he suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome, and the judge sentenced him to eighteen months. Yet Darren Burton of Cardiff, Wales, exposed by the BBC’s Panorama programme for committing exactly the same type of offenses, has never been prosecuted. Burton uses the justification of ’free speech’ to excuse his miserable rantings. [3]
Free speech, or free expression is the cornerstone of the western world; the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, part of the European Universal Declaration of Human Rights and exists in one form or another in most countries of the world, even if in some it is perhaps not strictly adhered to. It is what countries waged war for and it is a concept that millions have died for; not so that some twisted, sick minded or bored individual can sit behind his anonymous keyboard spewing hate at innocent people.
Perhaps it’s time for control over people who have no control over themselves.
References
[1] Jones, A., 2012. ‘Why Twitter trolls like Matthew Woods should not be jailed.. no matter how vile they are’, Daily Mirror Online.
[2] Luckhurst, S., 2012. ‘Liam Stacey Apologises For Racist Tweets Abusing Fabrice Muamba’, The Huffington Post UK.
[3] Matyszczyk, C., 2012. ‘BBC confronts Facebook troll’, CNET.
[4] Noblet, M., 2012. ‘UK diver Tom Daley subjected to abuse by Twitter user @Rileyy_69’, TheDigitalReporter.
About the author
Jean-Loup Richet is a research associate at the Canada Research Chair in Identity, Security and Technology at the University of Montréal. He graduated from the French National Institute of Telecommunications, Telecom Business School, and holds a research master’s from IAE/HEC Paris. A member of the post-graduate committee of the British Society of Criminology, his research interests include cybercrime, internet censorship and information systems security. Richet has been a speaker at several national and international conferences, and has published articles in academic and trade journals.
http://www.globalsecuritymag.fr/_Jean-Loup-Richet-chercheur-en_.html
