| HN Mirror

> 1. This is an internet forum not a court of law

This doesn't matter. "Guilty until proven innocent" is not exclusively a legal concept. Furthermore, you're making this opinion about a legal case, so even if it was exclusively a legal concept, you'd still be making an opinion about what should happen in a court of law.

> 2. He already plead guilty to his crime and been convicted, hes no longer in the "innocent until proven guilty" phase

This demonstrates a lack of experience with the real world, as it's very common for innocent people to plead guilty. This is trivially verifiable with quick internet searches[1]. Ergo, this claim is false - guilty plea status is irrelevant, especially if we're discussing the merits of the case or verdict.

> 3. Calling for violence wasn't even the crime he was convicted of. That was "publishing written material to stir up racial hate" [1].

That's even worse. If you read the definition of the law:

> A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—

> (a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or

> (b)having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

...you'd see that it's far less clear and more subjective than calling for violence.

> Personally I think it should, because stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging.

This is a non-argument because "Stirring up racial hatred" doesn't mean anything. The law is written so broadly that it can be interpreted to mean almost anything. It's also a concept almost exclusively used by the UK government that is used to prosecute political opponents with zero clear harm identified. And, the concept is exclusively legal, not moral/ethical - if you ask a random person on the street of any country what "stirring up racial hatred" means, you'll get wildly different answers, and more than a few confused looks. This also means that "stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging" doesn't mean anything, because you can't even quantify the meaning of the phrase, which makes assessing effects/damage completely impossible.

Even if you're acting in genuinely good faith (which is not the case in the UK) and only personally intend to use this law to prosecute people who are calling for violence (which is already illegal), it's extremely clear that the law is so broadly-written that it can be used against your political opponents (or, you, in case the party in power changes).

Not-so-ironically, you can see the exact same situation in the HN submission article - "Shanbehzadeh was sentenced to five years for alleged pro-Israel propaganda activity, four years for insulting Islamic sanctities, two years for spreading lies online and an additional year for anti-regime propaganda."

Like "stirring up racial hate", none of those terms mean anything (except what the state wants them to mean when it wants them to mean it in a legal context to persecute opponents), all of them are extremely broadly applicable, and all of them are actively being used by the state to suppress speech it doesn't like. You can take your statement "Personally I think [publishing written material to stir up racial hate] should [be illegal], because stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging." and swap out the nouns and get "Personally I think spreading lies online should be illegal, because lies are pretty damaging" and you've just justified what the state of Iran did with exactly the same logic.

[1] https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2021/may/15/study-sho...