http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/oh_portage/kent-state-university-student-charged-with-inducing-panic-after-sending-threatening-tweet

It’s just NOT the job of the state to take dumb statements in the internet at face value and turn them into dumb prosecutions at the taxpayer’s expense.

To keep freedom of speech I’ll take my chances that the police miss the genuine threatening ravings of one psychopath by ignoring the dumb ravings of a million morons. I’m not such a fucking wuss that I need the police to protect me from bad people saying scary things on twitter.

Would you walk down the street making jokes about blowing up an airport? No. Would you stand in the passport queue at an airport and joke about it? No.

Maybe not if you’ve given in to state mandated paranoia. The rest of us aren’t that freaked out about everything.

The UK doesn’t have a High Court. This decision came from the High Court of England & Wales. You may be surprised at how often the higher courts show plenty of sanity – it’s usually the lower courts where the madness happens.

The terrorists have more than won.

Investigating and clearing someone doesn’t seem to be an option because… that’s not what happens on the telly and that would be unmanly, I guess.

A bad taste joke invites immediate censure from your audience: that’s your fallout right there.  Getting arrested by spooks is absurd.  Yay judge!

One type of speech was accused of being threatening, but found not be. (“I’m so angry I’m gunna blow shit up!”)

The other is not necessarily threatening but can still be hateful. While some hate language gets close to threatening (eg Westboro) there’s no literal threat.

So it’s not about humour – it’s about threat (or the absence thereof) or it’s about hate.

But 20 years ago the average person could not have instantly broadcast that joke to the entire world, which they can easily do now, but probably shouldn’t.