Guy In Australia Pleads Guilty To Criminal Trolling On Facebook, Faces 3 Years In Jail

from the trolling-is-a-crime? dept

Let's start off with this: there's no legitimate way to defend Zane Alchin, a guy in Australia who appears to be an all around horrible person. He went on Facebook, and after seeing a friend of his post (and mock) a woman's Tinder profile, proceeded to post a whole bunch of pretty horrible and misogynistic posts on Facebook, including some pretty horrifying statements about "raping feminists." I won't post any of his other comments, though they're covered in some of the articles written about the case. Alchin, who now claims he was just drunk and trolling, and also insisted he wasn't breaking any laws, has since discovered that apparently he was breaking a weird Australian law, for which he's now pled guilty.

While Alchin admitted to posting the comments, he told police during an interview that "he was drunk at the time and the comments do not represent what he is about", the court documents said.

He said he was "internet trolling", the documents said, and was unaware it was a crime.

In January, Alchin entered a plea of not guilty to the offence, which carries a maximum penalty of three years' imprisonment.

But during a brief court appearance on Monday, his lawyer said his client would now plead guilty. Alchin is due to be sentenced on July 29.

The law in question is 474.14 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code that is insanely vague. It basically says it's against the law to use a telecommunications network to "commit a serious offense." But "serious offense" is basically left unclear. The charges against Alchin said that he used the internet to "menace, harass or cause offence." And many in Australia are pointing to the case as a landmark case against online harassment.

Again, Alchin appears to be a creep who deserves to have his name dragged through the mud for what he wrote online, but the idea that he's now facing three years in jail for what amounts to criminal "trolling" seems extreme and extremely problematic. We've certainly seen that Australia is no fan of free speech, with several questionable court rulings in the past few years, but criminalizing trollish behavior online seems like the kind of thing that is going to backfire in a big, big way. Lots of people say stuff online that may "cause offense." I'm offended by the idea that people face jail time solely for being jerks.

But when you criminalize offending someone, you actually hand tremendous power to people to attack others over "being offended." There seems to be this rush to try to criminalize speech people don't like, when it seems like most of this issue could easily be solved with simply more counterspeech. Shame Alchin all you want for being a jackass, but don't put him in jail.

Filed Under: australia, criminal speech, criminal trolling, free speech, harassment, trolling, zane alchin
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