zlacker

>>JoshTr+(OP)
For the Americans looking at this act, you're maybe putting it in the context of American politics and thinking who cares if the porn sites have my face or id.

But in the UK you can be arrested and jailed for saying something online that offends someone else.

>>ap99+b3
Britain has always been very hypocritical about freedom of speech. Take for example "Speaker's Corner", an area of Hyde Park were police will tolerate any sort of speech - except that, if there are complaints and the speech is considered potentially unlawful, they will arrest the speaker right after he's done speaking.

>>toyg+U5
Speaker's Corner has never been a place "were police will tolerate any sort of speech". It's a place where anyone can speak.

You're still subjected to exactly the same legal restrictions on the speech itself as anywhere else in public, and that's nothing new.

>>vidarh+wm
It's not new, no - the position has been the same since at least the XIX century, when Britain gave asylum to European insurrectionalists. But it's always been fundamentally hypocritical: being "free" to complete a sentence before you go to prison is not meaningfully different from getting interrupted before you go to prison.

>>toyg+ws
I wish it wasn't like that, but the position isn't hypocritical:

You're free to complete saying something unlawful because until you've said something unlawful you haven't committed a crime, but furthermore, English law on what is "unlawful" to say or do is also complicated in that many things are okay to say or do in contexts where they will not cause offence but becomes illegal if done in front of the "wrong" people or with the "wrong" intent.

As such, until there has been a complaint there often will not be a basis for saying that something was unlawful to say unless it is really far over the line.

If you were to start shouting something blatantly illegal such as chanting support for a proscribed organisation, you must certainly would not find police standing there and waiting unless they deemed it likely to be more disruptive to peace and order to stop you right away.

This expends past speech - e.g. public nudity is in the same category that isn't illegal in itself but where intent or the effect on others can make it unlawful - and this notion on relying on intent and whether or not someone present took offense rather than clearly delineating where the boundary is, is a challenge with English law because of the huge gray areas it creates.

[used "English law" as shorthand here - really it is the law of England & Wales, and much of it will be the same in Scotland, but Scotland does have a separate legal system, hence why it isn't "UK law"]