NOT all internet trolling is harmful. Websites that make friendly fun of politicians are also trolling. How boring a world where jokes are mistaken for attacks.
Archive for Letters and other Op-Eds
Disappointing vision
With Simon Thomas dropping out of the Plaid leadership contest to support Elin Jones (Western Mail, February 6), the campaign should have become less of a one-horse race that Leanne Wood was guaranteed to win, but reading Elin’s “vision” on her website disappoints me.
Elin talks Wales down from the start, feeling she has to justify we are a nation.
She says our legal system is not a separate jurisdiction, that we can only legislate in a small number of areas, and that we have no tax-raising powers so are therefore a “quandary” with no “power and status”.
As a Master of Laws, I’d argue all of these are wrong. Since last May, Welsh laws have to receive Royal Assent from the Queen, which means that it is only a matter of time before a conflict between ‘Welsh law’ and ‘English and Welsh’ exists before the Supreme Court will have to determine whether Welsh law is to be treated on par with Scottish law.
In terms of tax-raising powers, the Assembly does have those. It can pass any law it wants on local government providing it doesn”t take away their law enforcement and civic responsibilities. This means it could decide to set council tax on a Wales-wide basis and order the local authorities to pay the tax they collect through the precept directly to the Welsh Government.
The Assembly is now a Parliament in all but name. Primary legislative powers are just that, and Elin needs to move with the times.
Media studies more valid than Oxbridge degrees
I WAS disgusted to read how students taking A-levels in media studies are being blacklisted by some educational institutions (‘Students counting on maths to get good job’, Echo, January 31).
I have an A-grade GCSE in the subject and a joint-honours degree with a 2:1. I have gone on to be “one of Britain’s foremost exporters of online community and e-learning research to the USA and mainland Europe” according to Incisive Media, and have become a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for my Emotivate Project of increasing social change through multimedia education (www.emotivate.org.uk). Media studies certainly hasn’t done me any harm.
An Oxbridge academic called my degree a “Mickey Mouse” degree. I call their degrees “Betty Boop” degrees. Mickey Mouse is as relevant to our economy as when he was in black and white, yet Betty Boop has been replaced by more sophisticated animated adult cartoons.
They say people with media studies degrees can only hope to work in McDonald’s – I’m a director of three limited companies. But what about Oxbridge graduates? Maybe someone on their “classics and oriental studies” degree can hope to work in a topnotch Chinese restaurant in Dursley? Maybe a graduate of their “sexuality” degree could be given a scholarship to do a PhD by doing a photo-ethnography on the Avenue in New York? The truth is, a media studies degree has far more practical use than any Oxbridge degree, with the exception of those with professional relevance like law or engineering, for which their tutorial systems produce better elite professionals than most other universities without this are able to.
More powers for Wales’ interests
I must contest F S Wusteman’s claim that an independent Wales would not have an independent voice in the EU (Letters, January 26).
If one were to look at the current EU Treaty (TFEU) there are 62 areas in which every EU country has to agree unanimously before that law can be passed – one of these is Article 113 relating to indirect taxation like VAT so no member state has to give up its tax regime as they suggested.
The problem Wales has is we are not properly represented in the EU Council of Ministers in which only David Cameron and his UK Ministers have a right to vote on behalf of the UK. This body must agree to every piece of EU legislation before it is made law – and in many cases it can completely overrule the European Parliament if it disagrees with them.
Wales has no right to veto EU law that could, for instance, affect our manufacturing – we are at the mercy of the UK Government.
Readers will recall me calling for a British Isles Customs Union of the four British nations, which while all independent, would agree to common laws which could include a common position on EU law (Letters, October 22, 2011). If England voted to leave the EU but join the EEA it would have to implement EU law but have no say in making it. But with the BICU Council of Ministers they could do both.
In the meantime, while the argument for independence is being won in principle even if not in detail, as looks likely in Scotland, there is a way all British nations can get an equal voice in the EU decision making processes without any new primary legislation from Westminster.
Section 109 of The Government of Wales Act 2006 gives the Welsh Government the power to ask for new powers from Westminster, which could include the right to direct the UK Prime Minister to veto any EU directive that does not meet Wales’s interests. Scotland and Northern Ireland could be granted the same power.
These provisions could lead to a more united British Isles, where each nation can represent its own citizens’ interests while co-operating where this is in the interest of all citizens in the British Isles.
Comparing schools
I share the concern raised about the risks of cyber-bullying following the publication of school banding by the Welsh Government (“School banding raises fears over cyber-bullying”, January 23).
As an advocate of New Labour, before leaving the Labour Party when Ed Miliband said it was over, I am strongly in favour of parents being allowed to choose which school their child goes to. The rank and file of Old and Welsh Labour say this won’t work because every parent will want their child go to the best school – well that is the point!
A market in education, such as by removing the unfair catchment areas that partition this market and create geographical ghettos, would mean the best schools would stay open and expand, and the worst ones would close.
In such a market you would need a way for the parents to choose the best school. Government-sanctioned league tables or school banding does not help – parents need to be able to create their own league tables.
Even the “least able” people can go on to websites like GoCompare or MoneySupermarket and select what is important to them about their home or car insurance policy and what is not. If we as citizens can prioritise insurance why not other things? It is not grades that make a school a best school. It is factors such as whether they have special support for your child’s disability, whether they have after-school clubs or extended hours, and whether the school has strong pupil-satisfaction.
So if the Welsh Government is happy to have de facto league tables – why don’t they give parents the choice to have their children educated outside their area so they are not subject to the stigma that they can do little about without “upping sticks”?
Can’t see positives in conviscating mobiles
THE Manly Daily reports that children should be made to surrender their mobile phones at night in a bid to stop the devastating effects of bullying, according to a northern beaches expert called Rose Smith (‘Switch off the bullies’, January 18).
As an authority on ‘trolling law’ Ms Smith might wish to know that such a law was put in place in the UK under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 before the parts she seeks her law to do being repealed by the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, in part because of human rights issues.
How does Rose think confiscating a mobile is going to have any positive outcome?
When I was a child, taking one of my possessions would have serious consequences for whoever did and therefore myself.
This may be the case of many children from difficult backgrounds and the approach she says is appropriate is using martial arts.
This may work to discipline one and frustrate others.
Much of the guidance she gives relating to managing one child’s use of the internet is redundant with most of today’s anti-virus software, which makes life much easier for parents to control what their children see and restrict who they speak to.
Rose Smith can find out more about these and other facts at the Trolling Academy by visiting www.trollingacademy.org.
Internet history
I appreciate Walton MP Steve Rotheram writing into the Echo to critique my status as a trolling authority (Letters, January 11). As his colleagues at Westminster would tell him, I could not contact him direct, as he would not be allowed to respond to my letter, unless I wrote to him through my own MP, as this is parliamentary convention.
The Telecommunications Act 1984 made it unlawful to make abusive messages on a public telecommunication service. It was used to prosecute Internet trolling in 2008.
Mr Rotheram mistakenly says the Telecommunications Act 1984 and Communications Act 2003 existed before trolling. The former Act existed during the time that Usenet was popular, which was a primitive form of Facebook Groups and BBS as well, a primitive form of the Facebook wall. The second Act came about when the social networking technology I invented in 1999 – the circle of friends – was being popularised by Friendster and MySpace, before becoming an essential part of Facebook when it became mainstream from 2007.
So like the word “social media” that he uses is the new word for “social networking” beyond these text-based interfaces, so the word “trolling”, has gone from meaning simply “act of posting a message in a newsgroup that is obviously exaggerating something on a particular topic” as described in 1995 in the Internet dictionary NetLingo, to refer to a specific act of posting inflammatory or obnoxious content (which may not be text) for one’s own or others entertainment.
He would know this, as any other Echo reader, if he read the pithy response to me by D Frederick from Garston in November (Letters, Nov 26).
Powers in place
Reading the news about Walton Labour MP Steve Rotheram launching a Bill to tackle internet trolling made me think “it is the 1990s all over again” (Echo, January 3).
Back then, following claims that video games were making people violent, MP after MP called for tougher laws to deal with “gory imagery”. I did a GCSE English project on it called “Not the Houses of Parliament”, and two decades later the politicians still haven’t learned.
MPs wanted to ban my favourite game of the 1990s – Night Trap – because it had scantily dressed women in. It turned out that the Video Recording Act 1984 was all they needed to use, and the same waste of legislative time is evident to cyberlaw experts like myself today.
Had Mr Rotheram attended the Online Information Conference in London last November 30, instead of bemoaning his colleague the Rt Rev James Jones being stuck in Spain (ECHO, December 2), he would have heard me speak on how the New Labour Government, he never served under, put all the data misuse laws in place to deal with this – he’d also have got a USB stick with my 2010 journal paper on the topic!
If instead of seeking Cameron’s support, Mr Rotheram could have calmed down, and taken a breath to read my paper and slides and see all the powers Liverpool City Council has to deal with trolling because of New Labour, as part of its Community Crime Fighter Scheme.
They can issue jail-term-facing anti-social behaviour orders (ASBO) to repeat offenders they track down online using New Labour’s Internet surveillance laws (called RIPA), or for minor offences they can issue fixed-penalty-notices (FPN) under their anti-social behaviour laws.
Enough laws
As a prize-winning authority on trolling and cyberlaw and an expert specialising in UK data misuse laws, I had to respond to Walton MP Steve Rotheram calling for trolling to be “banned” (Daily Post, January 3).
In my research at the Centre for Research into Online Communities and E-Learning Systems at Swansea University I have identified the first wide-reaching law outlawing trolling was brought in by Margaret Thatcher as section 24 of the Telecommunications Act 1984 – it is still used today!
The provision, was subsequently duplicated with different works by New Labour in Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and both are often used in the same trial.
Following that, New Labour made many anti-social behaviour laws that could apply to trolling, and with the Police and Criminal Justice Act 2006, they updated the Malicious Communication Act 1984 and Computer Misuse Act 1990, both made by the Conservatives, to directly deal with flame trolling.
Is Mr Rotheram saying these aren’t enough, and the fouryear jail term faced by Jamie Counsel from Cardiff for trolling on Facebook too lenient? Being newly elected in 2010, I think Mr Rotheram, who appears wet behind the ears as a jurist, should learn from UK cyberlaw scholars, especially former ‘New’ Labour councillors like myself, who only left the Labour Party after Ed Miliband declared the days of New Labour as being over.
It is no good knowing Keir Hardie helped found and lead the Labour Party if he knows nothing of the work contemporary Labour stalwarts like Dr Kim Howells and Stephen Timms did to reform the UK legal landscape relating to the Internet and trolling, both of them realising Keir Hardie’s notion of a fair and just society.
Welsh laws
As a Master of Economics and published author on UK Constitutional and Administrative Law, I take question with the letter by H Thomas (Dec 28), claiming Bill Clinton’s authority to the “it’s the economy stupid” phrase against independence.
While I originally opposed further devolution for Wales (Letters, April 27, 2002), for things I was proved right on, such as sub-standard legislation authoring compared to Westminster due to reduced scrutiny and an increased number of civil servants fulfilling duplicate legislative functions, the landscape has changed since the referendum in March and so the debate must change.
Unlike H Thomas, I now think independence is the best economic option for Wales, as it will allow us to integrate further into the EU and grow our economy faster than we can being pulled by the economy of the south-east of England.
There is now such a thing as “Welsh law”, and an inevitable consequence of this is that we will need our own High Court in Wales to balance England & Wales Law with specific Welsh law.
The first Welsh Assembly Government was a sub-committee of the National Assembly for Wales which had most of its powers delegated to it before formalised in the Government of Wales Act 2006. So rather than fund the lawyers to argue the laws badly written by Welsh ministers unnecessarily in the courts, or even employ the many unnecessary generalist civil servants, the Welsh Government should do something else.
They should use the same powers used to set up the Richard Commission to set up a permanent inquiry into the standard of Welsh legislation, which means those with expertise on the law in question could meet in the Senedd when the Assembly is not in plenary, to discuss and improve the legislation.
Their findings could be made as crucial as those of the House of Lords are to the Commons, but with a membership based on merit and not privilege.