So, to be clear. Yesterday I linked people to a fundraiser for a guy who for the past 3 years has been banned from the internet, cost over $100,000 in legal fees and lived under the threat of jail time for the crime of "criminal harassment", which consisted of him tweeting at two women. The judge found him not guilty of such, he can finally come back online again and resume his life, which has lets be honest been ruined by all of this. I've read a good amount of the court transcript, I intend to finish reading it over the next few days and have kept up the with the case over the past year or so.



What I wanna make clear is, wanting to help him get back on his feet is not an endorsement of what he did. Some of what he said to those two women is totally fine. His criticism in particular of "no bad tactics, only bad targets", a strategy conjured up by a terminally-stupid man... oh wait no actually it was Scientology, my bad, I always get those two things mixed up, is valid. One of the women in question is herself a serious harasser online, assuming that you count raising a cyber-mob and actively going out of your way to get someone fired (successfully) over a flash game you didnt like, then giving interviews gloating about said fact and giving an awful TedX talk stating the only way to deal with trolls is to throw gasoline on the fire (a terrible idea).



However some of the stuff he said was clearly him being an asshole. Honestly, everyone involved in this case was an asshole to greater or lesser degree. Who was the biggest asshole? It doesn't matter, none of them handled their business in an adult manner, none of them seemed to hold any interest in constructive discourse. They all acted like petulant children. The key point however is this. Merely being an asshole online does not deserve jail time. It does not justify 3 years of ruined life. It does not justify $100,000 in legal fees. If everyone who was a dick on the internet at some point got thrown in jail we'd have no free people left. When you decide to deny someone their basic rights, restrict their freedom, put them in a cage, you'd better have a damn good reason for it and in this case, that was not present. I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, a second chance. I was raised to forgive. I'm not very good at it, I'll admit that, but I try. The guy was a dick. What he did was seriously questionable. But it was not criminal and he doesn't deserve to have his entire life ruined over it. That's why I have no problem linking people to his donation page. The guy has a family, he's under the Damacles Sword of crippling legal debt, he's had his life crash and burn because of this, he deserves a chance to get back on his feet.



As for the women in question. I'd like to hope they change their mind when it comes to their idea of online vigilante justice. I don't think they will, we're already seeing the usual regressive rags crow about the injustice that was done here, but I'm sorry, I'm not going to agree that putting someone behind bars for being a dick on the internet is ok, especially when the judge agreed that the people in question did not have reasonable cause to feel that they were in danger and have a very strange attitude indeed when it comes to their "rights" on a public, open forum like Twitter. But hey, we can hope right? Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment and as a British man, I crave disappointment.