Senator Lorraine Higgins wants to introduce a bill to jail trolls!

whether she's looking for publicity or not ...........she does have a point

A while back on twitter, I said something negative but truthful about Sinn Fein, it was the time of the SF ard fheis, Senator Lorraine Higgins responded to agree.
It ended up with me having to defend Ms Higgins as she was getting some horrible stuff said to her, for shock/horror not being a fan of SF and having the cheek to agree with me about the politics of SF.
She was getting abuse for being a senator as if she had somehow illegally became a senator, rather than through constitutional means. Just some real nasty putdowns, which were simply not fair as it was just to attack her rather than argue the points of SF politics and policies.

Banjo String wrote: »

Under the proposed bill, called the Harmful and Malicious Electronic Communications Bill 2015, it will also be an offence simply to send "explicit content" to another person.

This is the part that I find the most worrying. Doesn't it seem like it's going to bring in a kind of weird reversal of revenge porn? Someone breaks it off with you, and instead of posting their nude pics to the internet, you take their nude pics to the police and complain they've been harassing you?

This will have to be phrased very, very tightly to preclude massive abuse.

She escaped the dreariness of Galway and now works on the cutting edge of lawmaking.

Banjo String wrote: »

Well this is kinda my point, I mean you could tell a colleague at work they're a useless waste or space (for example), and this person could end up harming themselves over such comments.

Should you be Jailed or fined, even if such comments were an inconvenient truth?

Depending on the context and the frequency of such an exchange, the person making such statements could be guilty of a criminal offence under s.10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997; or the person making such statements may be liable to pay damages in respect of an intentional infliction of emotional distress; or the employer may be found vicariously liable in negligence or under statute (Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005).

The difference with the internet is manifold. On the internet, it is more difficult to prove persistence, since an abuser or bully may assume new aliases every time s/he is blocked from contacting the victim.

And internet bullying has a more sinister character given the relative anonymity of the internet.

And, social norms in the workplace usually act as a constraint on personal abuse in face-to-face situations, whereas internet users may feel emboldened by the private, indirect nature of their bullying words or threats.

I personally am strongly of the opinion that legislation should be drafted to update the Irish law on harassment, in light of developments in online communication since 1997, when the law on harassment had its last major update.

The Black Oil wrote: »

Digital Rights Ireland are very much of the view that existing legislation covers harassment and bullying.

DRI is a quasi-libertarian organisation that opposes any and each legislative reform which curbs the liberty of the internet. Sometimes they fight admirable causes, sometimes less admirable and less worthy. I would put their contribution on this occasion into the latter category.

An unelected nonsense peddler. She'd excel as an Islamic militant.

I'm all for it, as long as I get to decide what is trolling and not.

Roquentin wrote: »

everything that anyone says is open to interpretation, thats what i am trying to say.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Every working day, the courts and jurors are invited to infer intention, recklessness and negligence (inadvertence) as a means to establishing the guilt or innocence of accused persons.

A statutory provision which requires proof of intention or recklessness (beyond reasonable doubt) is the most typically-prescribed standard at criminal law.

Someone above has raised the possibility of harmless jokes leading to imprisonment. Do people really believe the courts are that mechanical in their approach? You could advance the same scaremongering in respect of the statutory law on harassment as it stands, given the broad scope of the language used in that section.

Instead, that law has been applied in a common-sense manner, having regard to the values of the community, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that the courts would suddenly adapt an oppressive stance in relation to online harassment.

biko wrote: »

I'm all for it, as long as I get to decide what is trolling and not.

.....like you do currently?