Free Speech in the UK

Started by ElectronicVice, March 24, 2018, 10:05:43 PM

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Saria

Quote from: LisztesFerenc on April 26, 2018, 03:35:46 AM
  Not that I can find. You seem to understand legal stuff better than I do, but I can't find what you say above expressed in laws reguarding public morality.

That's not the sort of thing you'd expect to find written in laws. Generally speaking, legislators (politicians) write the laws, but leave a fair amount of latitude for the courts to interpret them.

For a real world example, Canadian law (which is the law I know - I don't really know UK law, sorry) says that anyone who "uses, carries, handles, ships, transports or stores a firearm ... in a careless manner or without reasonable precautions" is guilty of an offence (section 86 if you're curious). That's what the legislators write, but they leave it up to the courts to decide what constitutes "careless manner" and "reasonable precautions". Those things aren't defined in statutory (written) law. The courts will turn to expert testimony, existing standards (like firearms codes and what's taught in officially sanctioned training courses), community standards (for example, if everyone and their mother is driving around with loaded rifles on an unlocked rack on the top of their pickup in your town, you're probably not going to be convicted for doing it too... but if you did that in a town where no-one does that, then yeah, you're probably going to be busted for it), and precedent.

So you're probably not going to find a precisely-described set of standards that perfectly cover everything that would fall under "public morals". Instead if you want to understand what counts as "public morals", you'd have to study case law to see what the standards used by the courts is. That, as you might suspect, is a metric fuckton of work. That's why lawyers get paid the big bucks.

Quote from: LisztesFerenc on April 26, 2018, 03:35:46 AM
In practical terms, I know doing something generallty promotes it, even if you don't explicitly tell others to do it too. Raps songs never told me to swear, but when I listened to them at school I would repeat the swear words they used.

That's not true. It is somewhat true that doing something helps normalize it... but that's not the same as promoting it. It's the difference between "I want to get away with doing this (without being harassed by society)" and "I want everyone in the society to be doing this too".

That's the difference between what a commercial/pop rap artist does and what "Dankula" did. The commercial artist is trying to get everyone to follow their lead. They're trying to influence the culture and set the trends. They want legions of fans to quote their lyrics, copy their look, and imitate their style. If thousands of kids across the UK started swearing the same was a particular rapper, the rapper might be stoked at how much impact they had... but they wouldn't be shocked at the idea that kids are copying them, because that's kinda what they were trying to accomplish.

That's not what "Dankula" seemed to be doing. "Dankula" was not trying to encourage anyone to repeat, mimic, or idolize him. He wasn't trying to influence the culture or start a trend. "Dankula" was not saying: "Look at what I'm doing. This is what cool looks like. You should be like this too. If you copy my style, you'll be cool like, too." "Dankula" was just showing off his own "cleverness". No doubt if a trend did start where lots of people started Nazi-fying their dogs, "Dankula" would have been totally proud of himself... but it's highly unlikely he hoped that would happen, let alone expected it. More likely he would have been shocked if he started a trend.

So because "Dankula" wasn't trying to influence people, there's no way he could be accused of threatening public morals. Quite the opposite, he was counting on the fact that what he was doing would offend public morals. He didn't want to change society to make it more okay to have your dog do Nazi stuff. He wanted society to stay exactly the way it was, so that what he did would have maximum (negative) impact. If society started thinking Nazi dogs were perfectly cool, his "joke" wouldn't be as impactful anymore, and he'd just look like a schmuck.
Saria is no longer on Elliquiy, and no longer available for games

Arvus23

Jokes are jokes, Dankula even stated this was a prank on his girlfriends, so yes. This was meant to be funny. Also note the disturbing statement by the court that they would decide the context of the video.

This was an unjust trial and should've been thrown out.