{"id":17362,"date":"2012-10-18T00:01:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T05:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17362"},"modified":"2012-10-18T10:00:38","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T15:00:38","slug":"the-rise-of-britains-cybercensors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/18\/the-rise-of-britains-cybercensors\/","title":{"rendered":"The rise of Britain’s cybercensors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill<\/a> in Reason<\/em> on the sad state of online freedom of speech in Britain:<\/p>\n

What country has just sentenced a man to eight months in prison for wearing an anti-police t-shirt, and another man to three months in prison for telling an \u201cabhorrent\u201d joke on Facebook? Iran, perhaps? China? No, it\u2019s Britain.<\/p>\n

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain in recent years. The birthplace of John Milton (\u201cGive me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience\u201d), and John Stuart Mill (\u201cEvery man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service\u201d), has become a cesspit of censoriousness.<\/p>\n

The frequency with which the police and legal system now throw into jail anyone judged to have committed a \u201cspeech crime\u201d is alarming.<\/p>\n

On October 11, Barry Thew, a 39-year-old man from Manchester, was sentenced to eight months in jail\u2014eight months!\u2014for the crime of wearing a t-shirt that said, \u201cOne less pig \u2014 perfect justice\u201d.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Social-networking sites are being subjected to the most stringent censorship. In July, a 17-year-old boy was arrested and questioned by police after he sent insulting tweets to British Olympic diver Tom Daley. The 17-year-old was spared jail but was issued with a \u201charassment warning.\u201d In March, a 21-year-old student called Liam Stacey was sentenced to 56 days in jail for making crude jokes on Twitter about a then very ill footballer called Fabrice Muamba.<\/p>\n

Last year, following the summer riots that rocked many English cities, two young men were jailed for four years for setting up a Facebook page called \u201cSmash Down Northwich Town,\u201d a reference to the town in Chester where they lived. The page was all about how cool it would be to have a local riot. No one accepted their invitation to riot, though; there was no \u201csmashing down.\u201d Yet still the two men were convicted of a public order offense, criminalized for being fantasists effectively.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update<\/b>: Rowan Atkinson<\/a> is calling for the censors to back off:<\/p>\n

Rowan Atkinson is demanding a change in the law to halt the \u2018creeping culture of censoriousness\u2019 which has seen the arrest of a Christian preacher, a critic of Scientology and even a student making a joke.<\/p>\n

The Blackadder<\/em> and Mr Bean<\/em> star criticised the \u2018new intolerance\u2019 behind controversial legislation which outlaws \u2018insulting words and behaviour\u2019.<\/p>\n

Launching a fight for part of the Public Order Act to be repealed, he said it was having a \u2018chilling effect on free expression and free protest\u2019.<\/p>\n

He went on: \u2018The clear problem of the outlawing of insult is that too many things can be interpreted as such. Criticism, ridicule, sarcasm, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy, can be interpreted as insult.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill in Reason on the sad state of online freedom of speech in Britain: What country has just sentenced a man to eight months in prison for wearing an anti-police t-shirt, and another man to three months in prison for telling an \u201cabhorrent\u201d joke on Facebook? Iran, perhaps? China? No, it\u2019s Britain. Something has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,10,28,15],"tags":[459,186,593],"class_list":["post-17362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","category-technology","tag-censorship","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4w2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17362"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17366,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17362\/revisions\/17366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}