The government has today said they are to introduce anti-trolling laws.

The proposed plans will make it easier for the victims of internet trolls to bring actions against either the ISP or the site owner where the comments were posted, or if the ISP or site owner discloses details of the troll the liability shifts from the site owner to the troll themselves.

The source of this is all over Sky News this morning :- http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16245551

To be honest its about time after being the victim of a troll myself, and if the law was changed I would almost certainly pursue a troll through the courts.

I think this item should be made a sticky somewhere as a notice to anyone thinking they can abuse someone online. The law is already starting to shift as recently action was taken against a troll who mocked Bolton footballer Fabrice Muamba on Twitter after he collapsed with a heart attack.

I was reading that, and im waiting to see their definition of a troll. Many, MANY people define others as "trolls" simply because they disagree with what was being said, or someone called another person a name in frustration.

I was reading that, and im waiting to see their definition of a troll. Many, MANY people define others as "trolls" simply because they disagree with what was being said, or someone called another person a name in frustration.

I think the reports have made it pretty clear how they define a troll - someone who follows another person around the internet, leaving malicious comments on FB pages and twitter.

Ahh. So theyre dealing with extreme cases. I just wonder if they will make the law even stricter, as if you frequent multiple forums, youw ill see many definitons of trolling/harassment.

Ahh. So theyre dealing with extreme cases. I just wonder if they will make the law even stricter, as if you frequent multiple forums, youw ill see many definitons of trolling/harassment.

It will always be easy to catch the idiots, and the new law will make it easier. Anyone aware of the law and using a nom-de-plume/non identiable picture could access via TOR/proxies and circumvent detection.

There was a recent facebook group based in Glasgow called 'Welcome to Israel, only kidding, you're in Giffnock' (a wealthy suburb in Greater Glasgow with a higher than average jewish population).

Despite the joke theme, many posts became anti semitic and a jewish organisation called in the police.

'After a challenging investigation 7 arrests have been made', was the press release from the boys in blue. It must have required great detective work with names, pictures, and locale of the offenders being left at the 'crime scene' (before even asking an IP).

At the other end of the scale - I lost my FB account as one running a group against corruption hiding child abuse in Litva. The group was a protest against the Drasius Kedys case (nice summary on wikipedia), everthing I did was made untracable given the number of deaths related to the case was nearing double figures.

Then my account went along with that of another who ran the group. So it was posting news related links that generated sufficient complaints to kill the accounts.

Would the UK's new laws pass on these IPs too?

Lets just hope the UK law is stronger than the US law that Bush signed into being during his presidency. The US version of the "trolling law" is all but forgotten now.

Having been around forums since Gopher, BBS and NNTP start days the use in these proposed 'laws' is a misuse.

What they are describing seems to me to be harassment or threatening behavior not trolling.

Trolling:

In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion,[3] often for their own amusement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll