The law must learn to keep up with technology
|
Quote:
|
There is a disconnect, rapidly widening, between the speed of technological innovation and the laws set up to govern what goes on in cyberspace. Worse, there's an enormous cultural gulf between the general public and the judiciary, whose job it is to interpret and apply those laws. Ignorant of the nuances of the internet and mistrustful of the milieu from which social media types emerge, our judges are simply not qualified to determine the appropriateness or effect of a jokey tweet. Add a vocal minority of pathologically offended Guardianistas and the state's paranoid obsession with terrorism into the mix and you get a horribly oppressive atmosphere in which irony, subtlety and wit will be crushed.
Paul Chambers, a 26-year-old accountant who has lost two jobs as a result of a joke he posted on Twitter, has now lost his appeal. Circuit Judge Jacqueline Davies upheld the original conviction, which said that the message he posted was "menacing". So Chambers will have to pay a £1,000 fine, around £2,000 in costs and he will have a criminal record for threatening, in jest, to blow up an airport. It is an absurd judgment; Chambers has done nothing wrong. Perhaps that's why Twitter has been ablaze with messages of support, including a somewhat opportunistic offer from Stephen Fry to stump up the cash.
There was a similar, though smaller, outpouring of sympathy yesterday for Tory councillor Gareth Compton, who suggested, perfectly reasonably in my view, that the world would be a better place without Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in it. His mistake was to say so on Twitter: suspended indefinitely from the Conservative Party, Compton is the latest victim of a persecution culture that is emerging from the heavy-handed application of inadequate legislation and a lack of understanding of internet culture and social context.
Alibhai-Brown wasted no time in cooking up silly and sentimental quotes for the press about her daughter being "upset" at Compton's joke, calling it an "incitement to murder" and cynically insinuating that it might have been "racially motivated". If Alibhai-Brown doesn't appreciate the secondary harm her crass attention-seeking and her jaw-droppingly opportunistic, politically motivated posturing have the potential to cause, then she really does deserve the moniker my colleagues over at Telegraph Blogs recently gave her. Because this disingenuous rhetoric of victimhood is the perfect complement to over-enthusiastic police officers and judges who are hopelessly ill-equipped to understand the context of a remark made on a social network.
This isn't just a debate about the erosion of civil liberties: it's also about technology. Increasingly, debate in the public square is being carried out online, on permanent and public social platforms. These platforms are fast-paced, aggressive worlds that encourage rapid-fire debate and quick thinking. They are adversarial by nature, and they show off much of the beauty and colour of the English language. In other words, these platforms are changing the flavour of public discourse - positively, I would argue. At its best, the clever wordplay on Twitter shows our language at its most inventive and amusing.
To crush the sort of humour that social media thrives on from public debate would be to rob it not just of colour but of its essential, and essentially English, character, as the brilliant Heresy Corner blog argued yesterday. Yet that is what's happening, as people become terrified of misspeaking online for fear of righteous opprobrium or, worse, prosecution. Public debate in the age of Twitter risks becoming flattened and stifled by ignorance, humourlessness and control freakery from the establishment, fortified by professional offence-takers eager to misrepresent innocent jokes to further their ideological objectives.
The widening gap between technological advance, internet culture and the law has already led to expensive and pointless absurdities being played out in our courtrooms. That's why the Digital Economy Act originally had a clause in it allowing the Secretary of State to effectively create law as needed to deal with copyright infringers, without having to go through Parliament each time: because the then Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, realised that the pace of technological change requires a more agile and responsive sort of regulation, with oversight from people better able to understand new technologies and the cultures that spring up around them. Mandelson was, it pains me to say, both perspicacious and forward-thinking in that regard.
So we need more, not less, power in the hands of legislators to react to new developments and define the limits of acceptable public discourse. We need better qualified people applying that law to the digital landscape; people who are not hostage to every special interest group and gobby Left-wing columnist like the last administration was. And we need intervention when the judiciary screws up - which it will again and again, as more of our public discussions shift onto the internet. That takes a degree of trust in our politicians, which is in short supply these days. But the alternative is expensive, unfair and pointless absurdities like Paul Chambers's conviction, which serve no one and achieve nothing.
|
The law must learn to keep up with technology - Telegraph
I read that Alibhai-Brown thing. Christ how I dislike that woman - and now I've said so we can no doubt look forward to a column explaining it's because I'm a racist, sexist, Tory pig intent on opressing her.
__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.
|
Linear Mode
