Don’t let the appearence of anonymity fool you into false comfort

Last week 2oceansVibe reported on the fate of Liam Stacey, the 21-year old Welsh student who let his racist douche-baggery rip on Twitter during the fateful Tottenham v. Bolton FA cup match in early March, moments after Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the pitch with heart complications, and was subsequently prosecuted and jailed for his crime, a “racially-aggravated public order offence.”

Here on the South African interwebs, we’re no strangers ourselves to highly charged online comments and forum posts- take a stroll past almost any of the more controversial news posts on any of the nation’s major news outlets* (cough, News 24, cough) and you’re more than likely to find some hair raising vitriol from the local online offenderati.

Well, according to a local legal representative, South Africans that mouth off online should think twice, because they are also liable for prosecution under our country’s laws!

Emma Sadleir, at SA law firm Webber Wentzel, told reporters at IOL that South Africans who post racist and offensive comments (also known as “cyber-smearing”) via social networks could be charged with crimen injuria or hate speech.

According to Sadleir,

the first and most noticeable is that people do things and say things in the online world that they would never do or say in the real world. People hide behind what they think is the anonymity of the internet to say things they would never say in the real world.

She added that a racist tweeter in South Africa could be charged with crimen injuria or hate speech as defined in our Constitution.

While there have been no reported cases of a South African actually being prosecuted for online hate speech, South African netizens continue to expose themselves to personal risk by posting content to their social networks without considering the wider impact it might have.

* Of course, here at 2oceansVibe, while we love free and fair debate around any of our stories; when it comes to hate speech or aggressive, offensive comments, quoth our moderators: “You Shall Not Pass!”

[Source: News 24]