Facebook vandal, Colm Coss, 38, was recently sentenced to 18 months in prison in the UK for posting abusive comments on commemorative webpages. The BBC reports that his comments were prosecuted according to a legal interpretation known as “malicious communications.” Read the story here.
Anyone who posts perverse comments is bound to end up with a poor internet reputation, but it might be news to some that internet vandalism could also land a person in jail.
Trolling is the practice of setting up fake internet social identities and then using that identity to harass, provoke, insult and abuse an on-line community or group. For more information check out communitiesonline.homestead.com and the Journal of Politeness Research.
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