New guidelines could see fewer people being charged in England and Wales for offensive messages on social networks.
The Director of Public Prosecutions said people should face a trial only if their comments on Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere go beyond being offensive. He said the guidance combats threats and internet trolls without having a “chilling effect” on free speech. The guidance means some people could avoid trial if they are sorry for criminal comments posted while drunk. The guidance comes after a string of controversial cases, including the prosecution of a man who tweeted a joke threatening to blow up an airport.
Case law
Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had now dealt with more than 50 cases relating to potentially criminal comments posted online – but there was so far very little case law set by senior judges to guide which trials should go ahead.
“These interim guidelines are intended to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and the need to uphold the criminal law” Keir StarmerDirector of Public Prosecutions
He said the interim guidelines, which come into force immediately, clarified which kinds of cases should be prosecuted and which would go ahead only after a rigorous assessment whether it was in the public interest to prosecute.
“The scale of the problem that we are trying to confront should not be underestimated. There are millions of messages sent by social media every day and if only a small percentage of those millions are deemed to be offensive then there is the potential for very many cases coming before our courts,” Mr Starmer told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. The guidance says that if someone posts a message online that clearly amounts to a credible threat of violence, specifically targets an individual or individuals, or breaches a court order designed to protect someone, then the person behind the message should face prosecution. People who receive malicious messages and pass them on, such as by retweeting, could also fall foul of the law. However, online posts that are merely “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false” would face a much tougher test before the individual could be charged under laws designed to prevent malicious communications. Mr Starmer said that many suspects in this last category would be unlikely to be prosecuted because it would not be in the public interest to take them to court. This could include posts made by drunk people who, on sobering up, take swift action to delete the communication because they are genuinely sorry for the offence or harm they caused. Individuals who post messages as part of a separate crime, such as a plan to import drugs, would face prosecution for that offence, as is currently the case… Read more
The new policies, which now apply to users as young as 13, enable Instagram, a photo-sharing service that Facebook bought in August, to use members’ names, text, photos and other content with marketing messages, the company said on its site. The new terms of use, set to take effect next month, could be exploitative, Chester said.
Facebook, operator of the world’s largest social network with more than 1 billion users, is changing policies for its Instagram unit as it looks for ways to increase revenue across its services. Instagram, popular with teens and young adults, reached more than 100 million users, Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said in September.
Facebook “sees teens as a digital goldmine,” said Chester, whose group is focused on privacy issues. “We will be pressing the Federal Trade Commission to issue policies to protect teen privacy.”
If users are younger than 18, then they “represent” that at least one parent or guardian has also agreed to content being used in marketing, according to the updated usage terms. The changes are aimed at protecting members while preventing abuse, Instagram said in a blog.
In the updated policy document, Instagram also said it may not always identify paid services or sponsored content. The company said it doesn’t claim ownership of any content on the service, though some businesses may pay to display users’ names, likeness or photos in connection with sponsored content.
“Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups,” the company said. “This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.”
