The barrier where free speech meets regulation in the
internet age is becoming one of increasing friction. In response to yet more
high profile cases the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has said first
that social networks must do more to police their own content and subsequently
that new laws may be needed.
The most recent cases have seen a man jailed for 12 weeks
after using Facebook to make light of the plight of missing (and, tragically
presumed dead) Welsh schoolgirl April Jones.
Another Facebook user avoided jail for his unpopular
opinions. But after using the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan as
an opportunity to tell the world that ‘all soldiers should die and go to hell’he
will carry out 240 hours of community service.
The welter of prosecutions has led – along with the posting
of millions of pixels-worth of online comment - the DPP Keir Starmer to look at
how the online world is policed.
In a series of seminars Starmer has held on the subject, one
of the prime movers for some sort of reform of the current system is believed
to be Britain’s police services.
They are the ones faced with a crime that almost anyone can
report falling victim to simply by logging on to their computers. Section 127
of the 2003 Communications Act makes ‘grossly offensive’material sent by
electronic means a crime. So now what might once have been the quick gross-out
moment of the latest sick joke in the school yard can cost a youngster a couple
of terms behind bars.
Chief constables want companies like Facebook and Twitter to
act more quickly to take down offensive material. The social networks are faced
both with increasing costs to employ moderators and of defining a line in the
free speech friendly world of the web over which its users must not tread.
Starmer may do what he has with other controversial areas of
laws – such as assisted suicides – and take all decisions on whether to
prosecute into his own hands.
However, he has hinted that the Communications Act has now
passed its sell by date and Parliament may need to make the decisions about
whether social media should be treated in the same way as telephone
communication.
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