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by pjc50 2849 days ago
http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-Meecha...

"Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 makes it an offence to use a public communications network to send certain types of messages including those that are grossly offensive or threatening. The prosecution argued that by posting your video entitled “M8 Yer dug’s a Naazi” on to the Internet, you committed that offence.

“The centrepiece of your video consists of you repeating the phrase “Gas the Jews” over and over again as a command to a dog which then reacts. Sometimes the phrase is “You want to Gas the Jews”. You recite “Gas the Jews” in a variety of dramatic ways. “Gas the Jews” in one form or another is repeated by you 23 times within a few minutes.

“On the whole evidence, including your own, applying the law as made by Parliament and interpreted by the most senior courts in this land, I found it proved that the video you posted, using a public communications network, was grossly offensive and contained menacing, anti-Semitic and racist material.

“You deliberately chose the Holocaust as the theme of the video. You purposely used the command “Gas the Jews” as the centrepiece of what you called the entire joke, surrounding the “Gas the Jews” centrepiece with Nazi imagery and the Sieg Heil command so there could be no doubt what historical events you were referring to."

2 comments

Personally I find this legislation grossly offensive and threatening.
Thanks for the link, as well as the quote!

Now watch people fall over each other to defend Nazi-themed dog gifs.

Defending free speech is not the same as defending or supporting the content itself.

Free speech wouldn't need to be a right in the US constitution if it only applied to stuff that wasn't offensive to someone.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

That is a grossly overused quote, that usually ends up used to defend harassment.
"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."

I think this applies here. Freedom of speech is the right above all rights and limits to that right need to be extremely precise and generally agreed upon.

The western world is drunk on politics. Concepts of racism, harassment, violence, fascism and the like are creeping into inappropriate territories. This is not a time to start making decisions about what people are or aren't allowed to say.

"Freedom of speech is the right above all rights"

Then Twitter has the right to choose who's speech they want to amplify.

"Concepts of racism, harassment, violence, fascism and the like are creeping into inappropriate territories. This is not a time to start making decisions about what people are or aren't allowed to say."

On the contrary, this move by Twitter is a step toward fending off some of those concepts.

I don't think I (or my parent comment) were trying to defend free speech. For context, I'm not American, and I'm a supporter of UK-style online hate speech crackdown laws.

I commended them for pointing out the lie behind "guy got sued for posting a dog gif", and adding context behind it. The discussion was not "posting nazi videos is hateful, but allowed because free speech"

Yes, I'll fall over myself to defend the right of someone to post a Nazi-themed dog image. Free speech means the freedom to offend. It even means the freedom to hate. Censorship solves nothing, and it's far too tempting a power to be given to the self-righteous.
Fall over yourself all you want to defend free speech, much respect to you. My parent debunked the specific lie that UK police stretched a law to fine a man for uploading a gif of his dog, and that is what I was applauding. Predictably, the replies ignore the lies and rant about free speech.
What else will you fall over for the right of people to post? Does this include the freedom to post without recieving a targeted harassment campaign, doxing, etc, or are you only concerned with government action?
And what other speech would you oppose? Speech in support for a "racist, xenophobic, homophobic, chauvinist, Islamophobic" president?