Let us all not support the YOG, and hope that it will be a flop
Suppose I write on an online site, 'Let us all not support the YOG, and hope that it will be a flop'. Suppose, too, that I live in an absurdly sensitive quasi-authoritarian regime, and that I am taken to court for making malicious comments that undermine the interests of the nation - not too hard to imagine since a Facebook boycott on the YOG disappeared without a trace. Then, suppose I say in my defense that by YOG I meant 'Yoyo On Grass', not 'Youth Olympic Games', and that Yoyo On Grass is a private venture by some of my not-so-close friends who intend to design a yoyo that is so smooth it can roll on grass; and suppose that these friends eventually testify that they do indeed intend to market that product. However, they are unable to produce evidence of this apart from sketches from their imagination: no business plans, no company started up, no engineer/designer who could testify, and so on.
Would the judge buy my defence? I doubt so. Would the judge acquit me? I don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like I will be convicted and the judge in her ruling will report that my defence is not convincing enough. To me, this is actually a defect in the legal system, because it allows room for personal intuition. The facts are in support of me making a comment that has nothing to do with the state. I am sure many of us make such comments every now and then, and while they may on occasion seem a tad aggressive they are rarely legally condemnable, particularly when no insidious rumours are spread about the product in question. (Consider the statement, 'Let us all not support the iPhone 4, and hope that it will be a flop'). And yet despite the facts the judge can assert that my case is nonsense, and that I was really referring to the Youth Olympic Games. If it were the case that the perpetrator was referring to the Youth Olympic Games, he got his punishment - but the manner in which he was convicted remains far from satisfactory.
(We may want to note too that if I am convicted, my friends who testified in support of Yoyo On Grass should be convicted for lying too; if they are not, then there is some manner of inconsistency here)
Ok. That's that. Now, suppose I have written all of the above on a blog, with the title 'Let us all not support the YOG, and hope that it will be a flop'. In this case, should I be convicted? The essential difference between this case and the last is that now I have no friends who testify in support of Yoyo On Grass: that product only exists in the first scenario. On the other hand, I can now say that the statement was made in order to ponder on some issues surrounding a fair legal system in a blog entry.
What if I'm a little bit more cheeky and write, on that blog entry, 'I have accomplished my goal of informing my friends of what I think about the Youth Olympic Games, without exposing myself to any potential legal trouble.' Presumably, this 2nd statement can be used against me. So I conceal myself further by writing 'What if I'm a little bit more cheeky and write, on that blog entry, ...' By doing so, I can claim to be still talking about a hypothetical scenario.
But not anymore, if I've written the last 2 sentences in. So I should either leave them out, or continue posturing about what happens if one writes against the Youth Olympic Games on an online site. After all, that's my main concern here, not attempt to persuade people to not support the Youth Olympic Games. But of course, one can rule that this last sentence is a sham, a smokescreen - and such a ruling will be no different from that which we find in the first scenario.
Would the judge buy my defence? I doubt so. Would the judge acquit me? I don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like I will be convicted and the judge in her ruling will report that my defence is not convincing enough. To me, this is actually a defect in the legal system, because it allows room for personal intuition. The facts are in support of me making a comment that has nothing to do with the state. I am sure many of us make such comments every now and then, and while they may on occasion seem a tad aggressive they are rarely legally condemnable, particularly when no insidious rumours are spread about the product in question. (Consider the statement, 'Let us all not support the iPhone 4, and hope that it will be a flop'). And yet despite the facts the judge can assert that my case is nonsense, and that I was really referring to the Youth Olympic Games. If it were the case that the perpetrator was referring to the Youth Olympic Games, he got his punishment - but the manner in which he was convicted remains far from satisfactory.
(We may want to note too that if I am convicted, my friends who testified in support of Yoyo On Grass should be convicted for lying too; if they are not, then there is some manner of inconsistency here)
Ok. That's that. Now, suppose I have written all of the above on a blog, with the title 'Let us all not support the YOG, and hope that it will be a flop'. In this case, should I be convicted? The essential difference between this case and the last is that now I have no friends who testify in support of Yoyo On Grass: that product only exists in the first scenario. On the other hand, I can now say that the statement was made in order to ponder on some issues surrounding a fair legal system in a blog entry.
What if I'm a little bit more cheeky and write, on that blog entry, 'I have accomplished my goal of informing my friends of what I think about the Youth Olympic Games, without exposing myself to any potential legal trouble.' Presumably, this 2nd statement can be used against me. So I conceal myself further by writing 'What if I'm a little bit more cheeky and write, on that blog entry, ...' By doing so, I can claim to be still talking about a hypothetical scenario.
But not anymore, if I've written the last 2 sentences in. So I should either leave them out, or continue posturing about what happens if one writes against the Youth Olympic Games on an online site. After all, that's my main concern here, not attempt to persuade people to not support the Youth Olympic Games. But of course, one can rule that this last sentence is a sham, a smokescreen - and such a ruling will be no different from that which we find in the first scenario.
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