21 year old British Twitter user jailed for 56 days for racist tweet

[Shelley]

What exactly is the benefit of throwing him in jail? This is talking about one guy's tweet. His tweet was not "threatening". A weak attempt to be funny, likely. I prefer to let ignorance be shown as it is. Why not? Let others learn and have it be their gain at the expense of some person's posting random crap about another person on the internet. Sure, have at it.

One benefit I see from all of this is he was a university student studying (forgot what he's studying) I expect this is now going out of the window and his place in university is no longer.
He's now on record, he'll think twice before posting racial abuse.
This sends out a warning to people that racial abuse whatever you call it will not be tolerated (I'm no law/lawyer wannabe and don't claim to know the in and outs of law) it quite frankly bores me.

On the otherhand, I can see such actions sending people to jail going down a dark and ugly path. Probably not related but switching it around

During the world cup our local council advised people not to have the union jack flags outside our homes in support for our team as it was offensive to our EU residents. Probably going off-topic with that one but it's an instance of what you deem is supporting something but can be classed as being offensive to other cultures so I can see both arguments in this thread which do have merit in their own rights.

In this case the 56 days in prison imo does have it's merits and I feel he deserved it. Though in the long term this could certainly backfire and surpress legitimate FOS and bent to something more sinister than it actually is.

Just been woken up by next door neighbours parrots so this post may not make a whole lot of sense in parts since my brain is still currently in neutral.

 

[Pereira]

The general fear seems to be that when you limit what can be said, then that opens the door for everything we say to be limited. So we must look to countries like China (a country that has limits on the freedom of the press and the internet) as reason why we should allow the disabled, the elderly and people of different race to be verbally abused in any form that we so wish.

We must allow this because when we protect these groups from such abuse, we open the door for anything we say to be limited. I don't see how such an argument can be countered when such stern views are held.

I should say that laws protecting minority groups from hate speech are in place in almost every democratic country. I really don't see what's restrictive about protecting these groups from such comments. I think the world would be much worse off place if we didn't protect them quite frankly.

I'll say again, we are at two opposite ends of the spectrum and I don't think anyone's going to come around to either side so I don't see how any further debate is going to benefit anyone.

 

[Sheldon]

Where are the laws protecting the majority from hate speech? You refuse to see it from any other point of view.

 

[a legacy reborn]

No matter how completely ignorant some of these posts have been to the fact that this guy's Freedom of Speech was violated I still think you deserve to say it. I mean, after all, it is your Freedom of Speech, right?

 

[lazer]

This is being referred to as a "Twitchunt" - hysteria created by faceless Twitter users, damaging peoples lives. A modern day Salem, if you like...

If people are now going to be jailed for the things they say then I think we should all consider buying a soap-on-a-rope...soon.

 

[Rho Delta]

If you ban hate speech, the law could be used to censor a legitimate position on illegal immigration for example on the basis that it is racist even if it has nothing to do with race. The war on free speech is usually perpetrated by multiculturalists to further their socialist agenda as a tactic to scare away anyone who disagrees by labeling them a racist. If you stand for free speech, you must defend the rights of ALL who wish to voice their opinions, with no exceptions.

 

[Sheldon]

If you stand for free speech, you must defend the rights of ALL who wish to voice their opinions, with no exceptions.

Finally.

 

[RobinHood]

I just stumbled across another incredibly ridiculous twitter case.

A 17 year old boy in Indiana has been expelled from his school for dropping the f-bomb in multiple times in his twitter stream. Are these people insane?

 

[MagnusB]

Free speech is absolute, once you start limiting it, there is a short way to remove it. There are no inbetweens, you can't just have freedom of speech when it is something you agree with, that is censorship, and we have seen the results of that several times through history.

 

[Fred Sherman]

Freedom of speech must protect the worst, most offensive speech or it does no good at all.

Should freedom of speech be limited so that people cannot incite violence? Should it be limited so that people cannot incite economic unrest or disrupt places of work? So no more strikes? No more overthrowing tyranny?

Limiting freedom of speech is actually censorship of thought and forced conformity. Be design, it limits all other freedoms simultaneously.

These freedoms are freedom of, not freedom from.

There is no freedom from speech, not freedom from exposure to religious ideas that are not your own, no freedom from press that you don't agree with. There is no freedom from the unpleasant. Our freedoms as designed to protect the individual from the majority, not to protect the majority from the individual.

We have lost our way if anyone truly believes this is right.