Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Yeah, it's just the ones dedicated to the act that will protect themselves.

Melissia wrote:Yeah, it's just the ones dedicated to the act that will protect themselves.

If they know what they're doing.

Y'know I've never understood why it is people look at these comments others make, what exactly is it that compels people to read these comments, is it the one ring or something?.
If someone says something that you find offensive, all you need to do is hit the report button and move along, no more, no less.

Some people view comments on the internet just like they'd view comments in real life.

That just makes no sense at all.

LoneLictor wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Again the crack legal team in Dakka's OT forum decide that since a law isn't perfect it is stupid.

And the crack legal team of Monster Rain manages to disprove everyone's concerns about the law with a single, insulting sentence.

I'm profoundly disinterested in "disproving" this silliness. Also, that post you're quoting had more than one sentence in it, so this isn't an accurate statement.

Clearly attempts to protect people from online abuse are flawed from the jump. I wonder who actually read the story all that closely based on some of the reactions here.

I'm on my phone so it is a pain to read the whole article - does it mention any particular protection people will have from false claims people make just to get their details?

Though I'd love to see them try to make a law like this for verbal comments

A- "You are rubbish!"
B- "Give me your name and address!"

looks like another win for people who can't work computers of change privacy settings.

People just can't take some harsh words now, everybody expects to be hand-held by the government through life, grow a pair and deal with it yourself.

purplefood wrote:

KingCracker wrote:DAKKA is so fudged right now

Not everyone...
Plan B is still viable AFAIK...

I'm not seeing the connection between these posts and the morning after pill. Both are filled with tears and regret?

Frazzled wrote:

purplefood wrote:

KingCracker wrote:DAKKA is so fudged right now

Not everyone...
Plan B is still viable AFAIK...

I'm not seeing the connection between these posts and the morning after pill. Both are filled with tears and regret?

Actually in a cunning ploy Plan B does involve Plan B...
It's so unexpected no one will ever think of it!

Words can hurt the same, if not more than physical bullying. It's not always as simple as 'growing a pair' and getting on with your life...

sebster wrote:I don't really understand this argument that because some people have the technical knowledge to hide their IP address and other such tracking elements, then any law applied to the community at large must be useless. The reality is that most people, and especially those dimwitted enough to spend their time stalking someone on the internet making mean comments, will not be able to take such precautions, and will likely be entirely unaware that they can be tracked.

Exactly.

It's not that hard to track down internet trolls at the moment, people have done it for documentary programmes on TV without the benefit of legislation.

There is a bit of a social attitude that such activities do not count "because it's the internet". This is aided by the fact that ISPs and social network sites really don't want to spend the money to help clean things up.

There are laws against poison pen letters and nuisance phone calls, though, because these are recognised as social nuisances. The proposed legislation seems to be an extension of the same principle into cyberspace.

Kilkrazy wrote:

sebster wrote:I don't really understand this argument that because some people have the technical knowledge to hide their IP address and other such tracking elements, then any law applied to the community at large must be useless. The reality is that most people, and especially those dimwitted enough to spend their time stalking someone on the internet making mean comments, will not be able to take such precautions, and will likely be entirely unaware that they can be tracked.

Exactly.

It's not that hard to track down internet trolls at the moment, people have done it for documentary programmes on TV without the benefit of legislation.

There is a bit of a social attitude that such activities do not count "because it's the internet". This is aided by the fact that ISPs and social network sites really don't want to spend the money to help clean things up.

There are laws against poison pen letters and nuisance phone calls, though, because these are recognised as social nuisances. The proposed legislation seems to be an extension of the same principle into cyberspace.

However there's no law about being in a bar or social setting, talking like a twit, and getting successfully sued over it.

juraigamer wrote:This law smacks of parents not wanting to do their jobs, again.

This, so many times.

TedNugent wrote:Nonsense law. People should have learned how to tolerate different opinions and harsh language in Middle School.

To be fair, some people find themselves the victims of extreme personal abuse the continues from school/work into their home life. It has led to suicides in the past. It's a bit more than just 'harsh language and different opinions'.

Frazzled wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

sebster wrote:I don't really understand this argument that because some people have the technical knowledge to hide their IP address and other such tracking elements, then any law applied to the community at large must be useless. The reality is that most people, and especially those dimwitted enough to spend their time stalking someone on the internet making mean comments, will not be able to take such precautions, and will likely be entirely unaware that they can be tracked.

Exactly.

It's not that hard to track down internet trolls at the moment, people have done it for documentary programmes on TV without the benefit of legislation.

There is a bit of a social attitude that such activities do not count "because it's the internet". This is aided by the fact that ISPs and social network sites really don't want to spend the money to help clean things up.

There are laws against poison pen letters and nuisance phone calls, though, because these are recognised as social nuisances. The proposed legislation seems to be an extension of the same principle into cyberspace.

However there's no law about being in a bar or social setting, talking like a twit, and getting successfully sued over it.

People get punched in bars, etc.

Facebook isn't a bar or social setting, though.

You're right, FB is far far worse.

Look! little Annie just took a dump!
Barbara is sitting in the school parking lot
Twinkie likes tweenkies
FB thinks you should be friends with Hitler21245

purplefood wrote:
It's so unexpected no one will ever think of it!

What does the Spanish Inquisition have to do with anything?

Monster Rain wrote:

LoneLictor wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:Again the crack legal team in Dakka's OT forum decide that since a law isn't perfect it is stupid.

And the crack legal team of Monster Rain manages to disprove everyone's concerns about the law with a single, insulting sentence.

I'm profoundly disinterested in "disproving" this silliness.

Clearly attempts to protect people from online abuse are flawed from the jump. I wonder who actually read the story all that closely based on some of the reactions here.

Monsters Rain won't engage in a thread, infers everyone else is dumb and that it's not worth his time
NEWS AT 11

ShumaGorath wrote:Monsters Rain won't engage in a thread, infers everyone else is dumb and that it's not worth his time
NEWS AT 11

I'm not sure I agree that this is what happened.

Did you read the story? This part in particular.

Frazzled wrote:Nicola Brookes was tormented for months by anonymous bullies after she left an innocent message of support for an X Factor contestant on the social networking site.
She went to police to make a complaint but claimed officers told her to go home. But the 45-year-old refused to give up and, on Friday, won a court order forcing Facebook to identify the identities of the trolls. She now hopes to bring a private prosecution against them.
The benefit of the planned law change is that a victim will no longer have to spend large sums of money dragging the case to court.

Instead, they will be able to obtain their accuser’s identity direct from the website hosting their remarks. An internet company that refuses to co-operate can still be dragged to court to reveal the details. In the case of Mrs Brookes, the information disclosed included the bullies’ names, email addresses and their computers’ internet protocol addresses, which can be used to determine a computer’s location.

Surely the basic premise of this law is a good one. The fact that something could potentially be gotten away with as an argument against the implementation of a law is, in fact, goofy as hell. I hope that clears my position up for you. As far as engaging in the thread is concerned, I consider giving an opinion as engaging. Choosing to go around and around in a debate on a subject that no one really knows a lot about (generally speaking) kind of is a waste of time.

Also, I'd like to point out the distinction that saying that someone might not know what they are talking about isn't calling anyone stupid, or even (in my mind, anyway) inherently an insult. People used to have thicker skin around here.

I'm not sure I agree that this is what happened.

Did you read the story? This part in particular.

My first post was in reference to the more anonymous setting of twitter. It's easy to get facebook to give up user information, it's something they do daily.

Surely the basic premise of this law is a good one. The fact that something could potentially be gotten away with as an argument against the implementation of a law is, in fact, goofy as hell.

A written law that is unenforceable in the majority of the environments it's meant to effect is a badly written law. It creates selective justice, and when it's this open ended it becomes a violation of privacy rights. I agree that threatening behavior online isn't a good thing, but this law is innefectual, exploitable, and poorly targeted. They might as well have called it "don't threaten people on facebook" or "backdoor method to subpoena identification about anonymous individuals anywhere anytime".

As far as engaging in the thread is concerned, I consider giving an opinion as engaging. Choosing to go around and around in a debate on a subject that no one really knows a lot about (generally speaking) kind of is a waste of time.

Yes, I know you think that. I was commenting mostly on the fact that that's something you do often.

Also, I'd like to point out the distinction that saying that someone might not know what they are talking about isn't calling anyone stupid, or even (in my mind, anyway) inherently an insult. People used to have thicker skin around here.

I got banned for calling a dude who was calling people terrorist sympathizers a troll. For a month. Yeah, this place has changed. I'm pretty sure I've been using the news at 11 bit for a few years now though, so that should bring you back to the good old days.

ShumaGorath wrote:A written law that is unenforceable in the majority of the environments it's meant to effect is a badly written law.

You're basing this bolded conclusion off of what, exactly?

Monster Rain wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:A written law that is unenforceable in the majority of the environments it's meant to effect is a badly written law.

You're basing this bolded conclusion off of what, exactly?

Outside of facebook the majority of online communications occur without names or credit cards attached. The law basically just becomes subpeonad IPs and those aren't a particularly good identifier of a culprit given how IPs actually work. They aren't even admissible evidence last I knew.

Monster Rain wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:A written law that is unenforceable in the majority of the environments it's meant to effect is a badly written law.

You're basing this bolded conclusion off of what, exactly?

Well it's the British government trying to do something related to technology, it will fail.

For example, the Department for Transport tried to revolutionize it's IT, this cost £81m and ended up with all the computers in German, and in 2001 the Health Secretary said we would all be able to view our medical records online by 2005, its now 2012 and we still can't, but the cost of that scheme was £12.7bn (it also made records digital for doctors but only 160 out of 9000 organisations are actually using digital records*). The British Government has repeatedly shown it knows very little to do with technology and will listen to the first person that comes along and not bother to check facts or run pilots or consider consequences.

Also the libel laws here are a joke, as the laws pertaining to injunctions. Basically if you have the cash you can silence anyone who disagrees with you.

*as of 2010

Krellnus wrote:Y'know I've never understood why it is people look at these comments others make, what exactly is it that compels people to read these comments, is it the one ring or something?.
If someone says something that you find offensive, all you need to do is hit the report button and move along, no more, no less.

These laws aren't really there for things like youtube comments saying you're fat, but for people being messaged constantly by an anonymous person, that they probably know in real life. So it's for teenage girls getting constant abuse from other teenage girl bullies hiding behind the internet. Stuff like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kilkrazy wrote:It's not that hard to track down internet trolls at the moment, people have done it for documentary programmes on TV without the benefit of legislation.

There is a bit of a social attitude that such activities do not count "because it's the internet". This is aided by the fact that ISPs and social network sites really don't want to spend the money to help clean things up.

There are laws against poison pen letters and nuisance phone calls, though, because these are recognised as social nuisances. The proposed legislation seems to be an extension of the same principle into cyberspace.

Well said. Explains it perfectly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:However there's no law about being in a bar or social setting, talking like a twit, and getting successfully sued over it.

And there's no law against being a twit on the internet (so Dakka looks to be safe afterall).

There are, however, real life laws for stalking and similar offences, and all this law is doing is making it possible to track down people on the internet when they do similar things in cyberspace.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ShumaGorath wrote:Outside of facebook the majority of online communications occur without names or credit cards attached. The law basically just becomes subpeonad IPs and those aren't a particularly good identifier of a culprit given how IPs actually work. They aren't even admissible evidence last I knew.

Lots of things aren't admissable evidence, but can provide the first step in police investigation in which greater evidence can be collected.

Its quite funny that the Government are now pushing through the communications bill, which allows the police to monitor your phone and internet use, meaning that can view when you send things, who you send them to and where you send them from, all this without a warrant. They will still need a warrant to view the content but it's still a massive infringement on peoples privacy.