Brickbat: What'd I Say?

Police in the United Kingdom are arresting about 33 people per day for posting offensive messages online under laws like the Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which target messages causing distress or deemed "grossly offensive." In 2023, the latest year for which data are available, police arrested 12,183 people for posting offensive messages—up 58 percent from 2019. Despite the high arrest numbers, convictions have dropped by nearly half since 2015, with only 1,119 sentenced in 2023, often due to lack of cooperation from the victim or issues with evidence. Critics, including the Free Speech Union, highlight cases like a couple detained for school-related emails and a man convicted for an offensive Halloween costume, warning that such arrests waste resources and could harm free expression. Police defend their actions as lawful but sometimes admit to heavy-handed approaches.

Comments

[Speaking for normal people]

Okay but Reason gave a pass to utterly foolish Biden's Government Disinformation Board AND --- for the sake of what? freedom of the market --- Reason let Kerry's winking at China's grotesque human rights violations go unanswered. You abandon Christian and Biblical principles and you have nothing but 'free trade' ---- and as Trump says that is to put people below profits.

[SQRLSY]

When Idi Amin ATE other people, you did SNOT say SHIT about tit!

That means that twatever Trump does, is OK!!! Trump and Trumpanzees can then do NO wrong! Shit is THAT simple! QED!

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Idiot. What is wrong with profits earned by people? Your complaint makes as much sense as "human rights not property rights", a deliberate misunderstanding that "property rights" is the right of people to own property. News to you, bub: profits is how people earn money.

Fuck off, slaver.

[Rossami]

No, Reason was harshly critical of Biden's ridiculously stupid Disinformation Board and called out Kerry's hypocrisy on China's human rights violations.

Not sure where you're going with that religious rant but if you're trying to say that the Bible is the only souce of morality, you're so very wrong that I'm not even sure where to start. I suppose we could start with the fact that the formal study of ethics and morality is first attributed to the Greeks and predates christiantiy by about a millennia. Or look at all the non-Christian cultures that nevertheless managed to develop their own systems of morality. Or we could take the other tack and look at the many, many historical atrocities committed in the name of those biblical principles you now revere.

Libertarianism and its focus on economic freedom is a deeply moral philosophy that, yes, prioritizes profits because that's good for people - and yes, for all the people including the poor consumers.

[Vernon Depner]

Western Europe and Canada have fallen. The USA is the last stand of liberal values.

[Jerry B.]

And the Democrats are working on that.

[mad.casual]

Only a filthy racist would assume that free speech is an exclusively Western idea and synonymize the fall of free speech with the fall of White/Western ideology. The people openly subverting free speech are just as talented and just as enlightened as white kids. That's why they're using Western social structures to cast civilization back some 1000 yrs. or more. You filthy racist.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The colonizers have become the colonized.

[Adans smith]

It could be worse, they could be French.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

Hint to england, the ones with rags on their heads are the criminals you need to get rid of

[AT]

Too late.

[Longtobefree]

WOW!
We really need this over here.
Think of the fun Trump could have with every single democrat who is online.

[Mickey Rat]

Some such people have received fairly hefty prison sentences, like the mother of a young child who made a despairing post about the Southport knifings of little girls in a dance class (which were apparently racially motivated against ethnically British). She received a two year prison sentence for an wmotionally motovated post (she had recently lost a one of her own children), more than some people who were convicted a child rape.

The Beitish government has a problem in which it would rather punish those who point out the problems associated with mass immigration than deal with the hatred directed against the native population.

[Rockstevo]

Although I can sympathize with these posters and it really makes my blood boil sometimes I also have to say what kind of idiot posts these things knowing you live in a country that will arrest you for it? Not like they just started doing this yesterday…this has been going on for years. This is on par with people that carry drugs into countries that have the death penalty for doing this. Hell, as I recall Malaysia had it right on their customs form…death for dadah (drugs).

[Mickey Rat]

Because this has been a relatively recent change to British law. The people of the UK are only recently catching on to how authoritarian and repressive their previously free country has become.

[mad.casual]

Communications Act 2003 and the Malicious Communications Act 1988

Sounds like they really need a Section 230 of the 1997 Communications Decency Act to fix the excessive blocking and screening of offensive material they're doing under their Communications and Malicious Communications Acts. That'll probably fix it.

Fuck ENB.

[Don't look at me! (Tariffs are killing the penguin industry!)]

WE NEED MOAR LAWZ FOR FREEDOM!

[Incunabulum]

And Europeans are the people we're supposed to be looking up to to because they're more sophisticated and worldly than us with their enlightened policies.

These are the people we're supposed to be willing to die for - they have more in common with Russia and China than they do with us now.

[Vernon Depner]

Yes, at this point, Eastern Europeans are much more American than Western Europeans. We should be striving for better relations with the East, and give up on the Left Authoritarian/Sharia West.

[GroundTruth]

You mean like Ukraine?

I seem to recall they are pretty decent on gun ownership too (and were even before Putin's War).

Amazing that we are politically descended from the Brits.... glad we made the break 249 years ago!