Rather than conspiracy this it seems falls under “aiding and abetting” which also covers counselling someone to commit a crime. As with conspiracy, the punishments for aiding and abetting are the same as the substantive crime (I believe anyway, it may be different in the USA).
So, if someone say “I’m gonna shoot a bunch of people”, and another person replies “Yeah, good idea, do that.”, that’s a conspiracy?
You just gotta remember to insert the “/s”. Mass shooters have a hard time understanding sarcasm. And so does Chief Wiggums.
You would actually have to know the person was going to commit a crime. Anonymous internet postings wouldnt merit these charges.
I think these internet trolls are more likely to face civil charges if they can be located. Given the use of proxy servers, public internet and leeching off unsecyred wireless connections it wont be easy finding them.
Yeah, that’s my main problem with the whole idea. If civilians are expected to take such things seriously on threat of prosecution, why not the authorities? Will they have to investigate every single posting on an Internet where you can say almost literally anything you want no matter how true or false?
I agree…it would be impossible to moniter. Unless they created some NSA type agency that filtered for words and phrases. But I dont think that that is doable politically.
Would anyone say this topic would be related to the Twitter Joke Trial in the UK. where a remark about blowing up an airport led to an arrest, and then thousands of people retweeting the offending tweet in solidarity?
What? How does that follow? That’s like being dubious about whether running numbers should be illegal because then you have to patrol every single convenience store.
I was saying that if the law requires that users react to all online threats as if they were meant seriously, on pain of criminal prosecution, what does that mean for law enforcement and how they have to treat those same threats?
Does the law require that for all offline threats? If not, why on earth would you think the law would require that in this case?
I suspect there’s a “reasonable person” standard at work. If I see a guy standing outside a school holding a rifle, and he’s saying, “fuck 'em all, they should die,” and I say, “I hear you, man, give 'em hell,” that’s very different from if I have the same exchange with a guy shaking his head after exiting a cable company outlet. It’s entirely reasonable in the second instance to think the guy is speaking metaphorically, whereas in the former instance, it’s pretty clear the guy isn’t. I’d suspect the first instance involves criminal speech on my behalf whereas the second one does not.
I don’t know whether the 4chan incident is closer to the first or second example.
You know how we have this rule in the Pit against threatening physical harm against another poster? It’s not common per se, but there are still regular mod comments, notes, and warnings against doing so.
Are all those people guilty of assault? (Example definition: The threat or use of force on another that causes that person to have a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact).
Or is the connection between posters so tenuous that the recipient would not have “reasonable apprehension”? It’s easy to see how that *could *be the case in certain circumstances, but finding an extreme example to support the general proposition that 4chan posters (and others) should be subject to conspiracy charges is absurd. Holding online interactions to the same standards as in-person interactions in terms of men rea or reasonable beliefs or incitement or a host of other aspects is a non-starter.
I think my general position is very sound, but my refusal to take a position on this particular case is confusing to folks, and probably it’s a bad idea, given the thread’s topic. So let’s have it: what specific quotes from 4Chan are we talking about?
Here’s a link provided by Terr in the MPSIMS thread: cache:OZGEjT1ilSUJ:https://archive.moe/r9k/post/22785729/ - Google Search
Even without sarcasm, it seems like a huge stretch to label that a “conspiracy”. Especially in this specific case where I’m sure most or all of the people providing the “encouragement” assumed the OP was full of it, and were just playing along to be “edgy” on the internet. How can you be a conspirator on a crime you don’t even believe is happening? Added to that, the guy wasn’t claiming to be on the fence, or looking for advice. He was just giving a heads up. It would have happened with or without a few guys on the internet saying “DO IT”, or “Hope you get a high score”.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m sure one will be along shortly. I don’t know what crime if any was committed by the other posters in the thread (assuming, that the OP was even legitimately the shooter). Maybe the one guy who offered advice on how to go about it, assuming the shooter actually followed it. But It just seems like people read that thread and are disgusted so they figure those people must guilty of something, just so they can be punished.
In my opinion, the people who were saying, “Oh, yeah? Do it then!” never had any actual intent to see shootings or other crimes happen. It was just empty bluster, not really that far removed from “Kill the Ump!”
(If 50,000 fans scream, “Kill the Ump” and then some jackass actually does kill the Ump…are all 50,000 guilty of conspiracy or aiding & abetting or some other crime?)
Yeah, it seems to me that in most cases on the internet, people egging killers on are doing the equivalent of egging on a toddler telling you he’s so totally going to hold his breath until he dies forever. Maybe not the best plan, but it’s essentially coming from a place that believes the threat is inherently ridiculous and will blow over in 20 minutes.
Should online posts that legitimately advance a conspiracy to commit a crime be prosecuted that way? Of course! I think a lot of the people involved with the GamerGate movement very well could be charged with something, because while some of it was “tough guy” talk, a lot of people in the chatrooms we know about honestly, lucidly wanted people to harass and threaten others.
But I don’t think the vast majority of internet egging on gets to that level. Certainly not the most recent case of it. Most of it is essentially mockery. That doesn’t mean it’s okay; it’s wrong and if you do it you should probably feel bad, but it certainly doesn’t reach the level of “conspiracy to murder”.
Conspiracy is probably the wrong charge in most of these case, but in Brandenburg vs. Ohio in 1969 the Supreme Court said:
“Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
You cannot, with impunity, incite people to commit violence to others.
Thanks for the link. Given the idiocy of the conversation that was linked to, I strongly doubt that anyone involved could be proven to think they were discussing a real crime.
Agreed, but what about the 14 people who +1 an inciting post?