Insult someone on Twitter or Facebook? A crime in Grenada
Grenada, an online grenade-free zone.
(CNet) – Grenada is having none of it. It has decided to take a stand and allow anyone who feels slighted by a nasty tweeter to copy the insult and present it to a court for its judgment.
Honestly, that free speech thing can be tiresome.
People end up endlessly expressing themselves and, every second of the day, someone’s going to get hurt. Online, that is.
It’s too easy to take out your iPhone and type “you liberal pig Euro a***ole,” or some other type of spontaneous flattery.
The island of Grenada has decided that it has had enough. Its lawmakers wish to designate the country a decorous online enclave in the midst of the vile, open-mouthed free-for-all that is the Web.
So they have passed a law that makes it a criminal offense to insult someone online.
As the Associated Press reports, if you besmirch someone’s character or name, you can be fined up to $37,000 or sent to jail for three years.
Grenada’s Legal Affairs Minister, Elvis Nimrod, told the AP: “We have problems when some use the technology to engage in mischief.”
In many countries, though, mischief makes the world go round. It is the chief angst-propulsion method open to those who otherwise sit at home and wonder why no one cares about them.
It is the most modern way in which people can attempt to affect others, without leaving their office chairs and floral-patterned couches.
Grenada is having none of it. It has decided to take a stand and allow anyone who feels slighted by a nasty tweeter to copy the insult and present it to a court for its judgment.
I fear this may put enormous pressure on Grenada’s judges.
Should someone describe a Grenadan politician as, say, “a big-eared, spineless chicken,” would the court demand that the minister present himself so that the court could measure his ears?
The law is even more complicated by its respect for the idea that companies are people too.
