New Zealand is making cyber bullying a specific crime
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Most countries having laws that limit freedom in favour of protecting people from abuse. They're used frequently, and they do work (at least to punish if not deter).
A law being abused by the state is a problem though; hopefully the New Zealand government will word theirs to protect against that happening.
Really sad to see freedom of speech being killed off yet again in an idiotic pursuit of an illusion of safety.
Freedom of speech is not absolute. It never really has been. You've never been free (in the specific sense of 'free' meaning 'a right protected by law') to lie about other people, to be abuse other people, to be obscene, to threaten other people, to copy other people's speech. There's a long list of case law about people who want to be free to say things and have been denied that right - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
Saying, printing, or posting online things that are designed to abuse another individual is not, and should not be, protected speech.
Obscenity is the easiest one in that list to argue ought be legal.
So for example, exposing the corruption of a politician (online) may well be illegal under the act.
I really dislike framing in terms of "freedom of speech." Many of the first lions of free speech: John Milton, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill... they framed it in terms of freedom of hearing. By silencing someone, you limit potential audiences and their right to hear. In this original framing, the rights of these listeners are crucial, not just those of the speaker. Yes, Sturgeon's law applies. Most speech is crap. But let readers and listeners decide for themselves what they should read or hear. Don't give a government body that power.
And honestly, is there any government body you would be willing to grant that power? The power of deciding what you could read or hear? Considering their typical level of competence, can you honestly say you'd be happy with your government being a filter for your senses? Would you be content letting them throw people in jail for nothing more than text typed on a keyboard? Maybe it's my American upbringing, but the concept seems absurd to me. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but... words can be a felony? What the hell?
Edit: I'm not sure how, but many readers seem to have misconstrued my comment as condoning threats. That is not the case. Everyone here agrees that threats to one's well-being are criminal and wrong. The law we are discussing restricts the exchange of ideas, albeit potentially crudely-formed ones. Let's not attack straw men.
I guess when people live in such fear from online bullying that they have to move house because of the rape and death threats they're receiving, it's a little more than "text typed on a keyboard".
It's not your American upbringing, it's your framing of the problem.
New Zealand's new law isn't about criminalizing such (already illegal) threats. It's about making non-threats crimes. Under this law, half of the comments in this thread could be interpreted as illegal. Hell, I can't think of a comedian that couldn't be charged under this law. That's what I'm up-in-arms about.
You say 'let readers and listeners decide for themselves what they want to hear', but that is exactly the course of action of this legislation. It's not a proactive government censorship stopping any abuse from happening, but a post-facto avenue to pursue for readers and listeners who do feel abused. There is no 'right to hear' being removed here.
"If you have something to say, here's what you do: You write it down on a piece of paper, you go out in the lobby, and then you go home and you kill yourself."
— Louis C.K. [1]
I and many others found Louis CK's performance hilarious, but what's stopping him from being locked up the next time he performs in New Zealand? It's only fame and prosecutorial discretion that stands between him and a prison sentence.
1. http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/how-louis-c-k-became...
I am willing to bet 1 bitcoin (≈265 USD), at even odds, that within a year we will see an article on the front page of HN showing abuses of the Harmful Digital Communications Bill. Specific abuses may include: corporate censorship, overreactions to jokes, or people jailed for offhand drunk-posting. There are a myriad of possibilities.
If this happens, you pay me one bitcoin. If this does not happen, I pay you one bitcoin. If you're interested in this bet (or terms similar to it), let me know and I would be happy to discuss details.
I should warn you: The history of these sorts of laws is pretty bad. For example, Malicious Communications Act[1] has been used in all kinds of ridiculous cases. People have been arrested for posting images as pedestrian as a burning poppy.[2]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_Communications_Act_1...
2. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/12/kent-man-arrested-...
Similarly, I don't like your mechanism for success - a mere article on the front page of HN. For $265, what's to stop you writing an article and submitting it yourself? Your profile page clearly indicates your current handle as being intentionally anonymous so comments can't be traced back to you personally. And if your problem is that the law will be abused, why do you have no qualms in taking any article as being written in good faith, no matter the author?
And, even if you can provide a single counter-example, well, welcome to law. Sometimes false positives happen. That people get falsely convicted of rape or murder laws don't mean that rape or murder laws are an affront to freedom and must be disposed of. Laws are sledgehammers, not scalpels, and coming up with single counter-examples is worthless.
I'm also not personally interested in BTC. It's a farce - it's fun to play with for some and that's cool, but it's never going to be a functional currency. As I don't really find it fun (friends are fans), I've never bothered to get set up properly with it.
To sum up: no, I don't take your bet.
Edit: Writing your own article would actually be worth $530, since that's the delta between paying out and collecting winnings.
That a complete misrepresentation of how this law works. If Louis C.K. created a digital communication which contravened Principle 9 ('do not incite others to commit suicide') [1] then the victim might complain to the Approved Agency, which is presently Netsafe NZ [2], who mediates between Louis C.K. and the complainant.
If mediation is unsuccessful and Netsafe believes it is warranted Louis C.K. could be referred to the District Court, who hears submissions and makes orders as it deems necessary per s 11 [3] including referring the complaint back to Netsafe for further mediation. If the Court makes an order (e.g., 'remove the communication') and Louis C.K. refuses to comply he may be fined, or at the extreme end be sentenced to six months imprisonment [4] which in New Zealand would be served as home detention.
The New Zealand justice system is typically fairly lenient and lacks most of the mandatory sentencing requirements of the U.S. justice system. The District Court would not impose any significant fine or home detention unless the offending was at the extreme end of the scale, e.g. Louis C.K. incited a specific vulnerable individual to commit suicide in front of a large audience and they subsequently attempted to do so.
There is a lot more than 'prosecutorial discretion' between Louis C.K. and a prison sentence. This law is far from perfect, and maybe it'd be better if it didn't exist at all, but it's not imposing the insane wholesale restrictions on free speech that is being suggested throughout this thread.
1. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0063/latest/w... 2. http://www.netsafe.org.nz/ 3. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0063/latest/w... 4. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0063/latest/w...
Living in fear destroys lives. And for what? So some idiot sack of shit can feel like a big man for scaring people? Why exactly should that be permitted?
a) This can be extremely deadly. Enough hate speech can lead to real violence. Europe knows this from horrible experience. A modern example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...
b) Don't pretend that America doesn't have free speech restrictions in the legal system. The most egregious example is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_libel_laws , but there are also plenty of national security related ones. Try sending some death threats to the President and see what happens.
c) We really need to distinguish between saying things to people which a third party doesn't want discussed (the freedom of hearing case) and saying things to someone which that person doesn't want to hear. I don't think you can invoke Mill to give you unlimited freedom to send death and rape threats to strangers on the internet.
You know you can put fingers in your ears, right?
Because you can't know, until communication starts, whether it's going to be vicious. And you can't walk around with your fingers in your ears all the time.
Some internet services get this, but it's awfully easy for people to generate new accounts to route abuse through.
We could do well to develop anti-abuse technology in the same mode as anti-spam.
I can only assume you have not talked with antivaxxers, climate change deniers or people taking their religion too seriously.
Whether insult hurts or not is your choice. If you have such weak control over your inner world - learn to not give a fuck. not that hard.
This is nonsense. If you are subjected to continuous, vitriolic, realistic rape threats on Twitter then this is inevitably going to stress you and make you feel somewhat unhappy or unsafe. But if you are a 14-year-old, or otherwise particularly vulnerable, then they may cause acute depression or suicide.
This Act isn't about antivaxxers or climate change deniers. It is about revenge porn and vicious cyberbullying, and I am not prepared to stand up for either.
The problem here is that most people who suggest 'just ignore it' as a solution haven't ever faced the sort of abuse that the proposed law is designed to deal with. You're quite right that it's easy to ignore an insult. It's much harder to ignore a believable death or rape threat, racist remark, misogyny, etc. That is what you're suggesting people should 'learn to not give a fuck' about. As someone who believes quite strongly that we shouldn't just ignore those things and that we should actively try to stop them, I find your argument incomprehensible.
Yes! Of course!
Your line of argument is exactly like "I didn't kill him. I just moved my hands which happened to hold a knife which happened to travel through his chest."
Outcome matters. Intent matters.
Deconstructing real actions until some supposedly bizarre conclusion is reached does not matter.
I don't consider being mean to people on the internet default worthy of any law or punishment. Telling someone "You're an idiot and I hope you die in a fire" is my internet given right, assuming the context of the comment is right (it's within the social norms for that board/forum/site/reddit/whatever). But this law makes no allowances for such things.
Twitter is weird, because there are no norms, no mods, no masters. In essence that's a large part of the problem. No filters. No choice of engagement.
How far do you take that right though? Does the person you're trying to say it to have to hear you, or are they allowed to block you? Are you allowed to set up multiple accounts to evade the block? Are you allowed to take the message to AFK-world - sending letters through the mail or telephoning your insults?
The Criado-Perez trolls who were jailed didn't just send a couple of messages. They bombarded Criado-Perez with hundreds of messages.
> threats that [Sorley] had sent, including "just got out of prison and would happily do more time to see you buried” and “Rape?! I'd do a lot worse things than rape you!!"
Here she talks about the type of messages she was getting.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/04/caroline...
Note that she says:
> She is still getting violent threats, and two people have now been arrested. When she was campaigning, she was getting hostile messages, she says, but they were relatively benign. "Get back to the kitchen, shut up, fuck off. That was just people being unpleasant and not liking feminists. But it was nothing that would have led me to report them to the police."
> Now, she is dealing with something altogether different. What kind of tweets has she received? "Gosh." She looks embarrassed. "So, for example, someone was talking about giving me a good smashing up the arse. Somebody said: 'All aboard the rape train.' Some guy tweeted another guy asking if he wanted to join in raping me." Then there were the death threats. "One was from a really bright guy who said: 'I've just got released from prison.'" She shows me her phone: "I'd do a lot worse than rape you. I've just got out of prison and would happily do more time to see you berried [sic]. #10feetunder." The tweet is signed Ayekayesa. There is another one, equally chilling. "I will find you, and you don't want to know what I will do when I do. You're pathetic. Kill yourself. Before I do. #Godie."
I hope you can see there's a difference between someone saying "FOAD" and someone sending hundreds of death and rape threats per day from multiple different accounts.
I absolutely do - and I agree with basically everything you say. What I'm not sure about is where the law draws the line.
Twitter [social media] feels like a real problem for abuse, because instead of saying "anything goes, leave or stay at will" or moderating according to community rules, they claim no responsibility or interest and simply refer to the police.
I don't have answers, and I know defending my right to be a dick to someone for bad posting on some forum somewhere is somewhat pathetic. I just feel like "people could be fined or sent to prison for using deliberately harmful, threatening or offensive language" is dangerous. I'm pretty sure on the last one I've got some jail time coming - especially if the offence can be taken by someone to whom it isn't addressed...
These are all things that courts deal with every day with AFK verbal aggression.
What makes you say that? There's a lot of nasty stuff like revenge porn that goes on and is hard to prosecute under existing laws. Why won't an act like this that bans it specifically help anyone?
If someone agrees to be filmed/photographed and leaves the material with the other person, I don't see why the state should intervene. This is especially so if the person doesn't attach any conditions at the time (though as I showed, we're even prepared not to enforce such conditions in other circumstances).
>Hunter Moore, 26, used to run a website called IsAnyoneUp.com, which he told "Nightline" he had launched as a place for "public humiliation."
I have no problem with people like that getting prosecuted which he was in the end.
While I can't speak for the U.S., in New Zealand consent is vitiated by mistaken identity [1]. I suspect there is also common law precedent.
> If someone agrees to be filmed/photographed and leaves the material with the other person, I don't see why the state should intervene.
Firstly, because from a policy perspective, having an intimate recording publicly and permanently released without consent massively harms the victim to the extent they may be driven to suicide, and there is no reasonable case to be made that the perpetrator should have the right to release such a recording, considering their intention is to inflict pain and trauma upon their victim.
Secondly, intimate recordings are implicitly provided in confidence. It is a social norm that if you receive a sext you do not immediately post it to Facebook. I see no problem in establishing this implicit confidential relationship in statute considering the outcomes of revenge porn.
1. Crimes Act s 128A(6) http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/D...
> Secondly, intimate recordings are implicitly provided in confidence.
Lots of things are implicitly provided in confidence and yet we don't punish people through the legal system for violating confidence. If I tell a secret to a friend that would bring me disrepute if widely known and he reveals it to the world, can I sue him absent an NDA (assume that he knows that I told it to him in confidence)?
As to implicit consent, we actually assume consent very broadly in other areas of the law -- see for instance the third party doctrine -- people who voluntarily give information to third parties have "no reasonable expectation of privacy". But I guess if it's the government it's OK.
Well, under the law in many countries, that is not the case. For example, Facebook may not give any of your data to advertisers if you live in the EU. Similar situations exist in New Zealandish law.
The problem is one of implementation. How do you gather proof/evidence, how do you prove intent beyond reasonable doubt, and how do you support the victims during and after. A fair amount of the existing problem is similar to bullying in other area: the victims being scared to speak out either just through fear of the perpetrators or through the thought that nothing can and/or will be done. And other key problem is people in law enforcement (from the cops on the street all the way up to the judges and legislators) and people in society's support structures (parents, teachers, councillors, and so forth) not understanding: being out of touch with the technology, or facets of modern culture (cyber-bullying is a lot more common in the young and many who where young 20 or more years ago, and I'm including myself there, don't quite understand those people), or often both.
Sometimes the more specific a crime the easier it is for a good legal team (or just a clever arsehole) to find loopholes that allow them to get away with things that are effectively the same thing but are not covered by the exact wording, so great care needs to be taken in drafting the law.
Having said that: making it a specific crime might be a very useful stop-gap measure though. It at least tells both the victims and those on the other side that the situation is being taken seriously, brings the matter to sharper focus for the implementers/enforcers of the law so they'll see the need to fill the knowledge/experience gap, and to an extent brings the issue to increased public attention (hopefully with similar effect where needed).
By explicitly singling it out with its own definition and punishments, this will no doubt it makes things easier for the police, courts and victims I think.
Assuming it doesn't get abused by our idiot politicians anyway (I'm from NZ - looking at you Colin Craig).
"We must do something, this bill is indeed something, therefore we must pass this bill"
There are already sufficient protections in common law against harmful speech and passing vague law that only applies to online speech just makes us look like idiots.
New Zealand's centre right National party under John Key has made a lot of concerning moves regarding civil liberties, censorship, and the internet. A couple examples:
Expanding the GCSB (NZ's NSA) to allow domestic spying http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...
Kim Dotcom's shakedown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Arrest_and_extradit...
I view this bill as another attempt to control speech online with "cyber bullying" being just a useful phrase to push this sort of legislation through..
If there is cause, they can then send it off to a court which will then determine what is to happen. The court can refer it back to the agency for more attempts at mediation etc... before making a ruling.
These are all reasonable checks on balances from the point of view of ensuring that this is not abused to censor speech etc. The courts are even instructed to take account of the "intent" of the communicator. So it's not like the nutso feminist-left - with their "intent is not magic" belief - are driving this bill.
So from this point of view the bill is actually quite reasonable...
Of course, from another point of view - i.e. when you consider the sheer number of assholes on the internet, it remains completely insane. The stated intent of the bill is to provide timely redress to victims. Lol - when hell freezes over.
My prediction - The delegated agency is going to be woefully under-funded. As far as I can see in the legislation - it is actually toothless. Any enforcement has to come from the courts. So people will learn to ignore the agency... feed-backing more cases onto the courts which see their time getting taken up because people can't get along on the internet. edit: the problem being that people WILL submit frivolous cases. Lots of them.
Victims won't by-and-large get the timely redress promised - except for a couple of high profile cases that make it into the media. And this non-result will come at great expense.
But thanks for being the test case NZ... nothing like empirical confirmation of any point of view.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2015/0063/latest/w...
Really? They're going to send people to prison for "being obscene" on the Internet?