The Art of Trolling Law Enforcement: A Review and Model for implementing ‘flame trolling’ legislation enacted in Great Britain (1981-2012)
The Art of Trolling Law Enforcement: A Review and Model for implementing ‘flame trolling’ legislation enacted in Great Britain (1981-2012)
Jonathan Bishop
Abstract
While trolling has existed as a term since the 1990s and as a reality even earlier there has been an exponential increase in the prevalence of the abusive kind – ‘flame trolling’. Mistakenly the media calls these flame trollers, ‘trolls’, when in fact there are more often than not ‘Snerts’ and ‘E-Vengers’. The justice system in Great Britain has taken a sporadic approach to dealing with flame trolling, and the wide range of legislation that has existed since the 1980s has no strategic method to assign its usage on the basis of the nature of the flame trolling as its use often depends on the whim of different police forces. This paper hopes to change this. After a brief presentation of the background of Internet trolling in Great Britain and in general a new framework is presented. This allows prosecutors to easily classify flame trolling based on the facts of the case and pick the appropriate level based on the severity.
Full Text
References
Bishop, J. (2013). he Art of Trolling Law Enforcement: A Review and Model for implementing ‘flame trolling’ legislation enacted in Great Britain (1981-2012), International Review of Law, Computers and Technology 27(3).
