Ricky Lee Davies
A financial consultant who tweeted “grossly offensive” racist messages has been spared prison.
Ricky Lee Davies, 20, sent a message aimed at Asians saying: “Why don’ you f*** back to the desert, you c***s.”
A court heard Davies went on Twitter after watching a late-night TV show about Muslim extremist terrorism and poppy burning.
After the show, viewers were asked to join in a debate on social networking sites.
But magistrates heard Davies put his racist views on Twitter and police received a barrage of complaints.
Prosecutor Jonathan Coombs said: “It was seen by a large number of Twitter users – the message was directed to Muslims and Pakistani nationalities.
“But it could have been offensive to anyone of any nationality or of any faith.”
Davies has a previous conviction for calling a bearded man in a turban Bin Laden.
Davies, who lives with his elderly grandparents in St Thomas, Swansea, admitted sending a grossly offensive message by public communications network.
Dan Heard, defending, said: “He entered into a debate after the TV programme but failed to articulate himself properly and it became name calling.
“None of those who replied to his Twitter were particularly offended – they just thought he was a silly boy.”
EU plan to voluntarily remove “terrorist content” finally concludes
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM—During the last two years, CleanIT, the European Commission-funded project group to “reduce terrorist use of the Internet,” has met on a regular basis trying to come up with a set of voluntary general principles to achieve that vague goal. Earlier this month, the group published its “final report,” in which it called for a “flag this as terrorism” content button in your browser.
On Wednesday, I moderated the final symposium—my travel and lodging was paid for out of the project’s €326,000 ($442,000) budget. An assembled crowd (including a few Ars readers!) of around 50 people came together at a European Parliament-adjacent hotel in downtown Brussels to hear from various speakers from government, academia, and civil society across Europe.
After hours of talks, it remained quite vague if or how CleanIT would move forward given its two-year funding had come to a close. Most speakers seemed mainly interested in thanking the Dutch officials leading the effort and in presenting more questions than answers. Whether or not the project’s voluntary “best practices”—which include a (possibly browser-based) “user-friendly flagging system” and an “effective and efficient notice and take action procedure”—would ever actually take effect was anyone’s guess.
Despite all the talk of “Internet companies [who] state clearly in their terms and conditions that they will not tolerate terrorist use of the Internet on their platforms, and how they define terrorism,” as was stated in thefinal conference document (PDF), there were hardly any representatives from the private sector. Based on a show of hands, only six people belonged to that category, with no participants from a search engine or a social network. There was one person who did work for a private, academic ISP.
Short URL: http://www.newsnet14.com/?p=119182
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