And you already know that he's currently out on bail, which would make zero sense if he had been convicted and sentenced.
I edited my posts multiple times and forgot to edit that question out. It was a dumb question to ask once I had found out that he's out on bail.
If you're going to claim that the cases are different because the Texas kid said he's going to do something
Yes, that is the difference. He was charged with making threats, while the people in the British cases were charged with trolling. He should never have been charged with it, but that's not relevant to a discussion about stupid laws.
Sure, if you want to restrict the discussion to written laws only, then you're right. In my view, what happens in practice is much more important than what's written down on paper - I made this clear in my very first post on this subject, so if you tried arguing anything else, you simply weren't addressing my post.
Of course, the two
should be one and the same, but they're not. The matter of fact is that people in the UK can land in jail for 3-ish months, while in America teenagers spend more than that being tormented by the legal system.
Also, it seems like the case you're making now is that America is less guilty here because they wrongly accuse people of things they haven't done ("oh, yeah, it's 8 years, but only because he was charged with a more severe crime despite having committed a very comparable offence!"). I'm frankly not sure how that could win you any points.
he's only not in jail right now because he paid his $500,000 bail.
Also, speaking of straw men, this is a pretty irrelevant factoid.
It's not irrelevant at all. I'm pointing out that America
de facto fucks up innocent trolls much harder than the United Kingdom. Tormenting teenagers for years and demanding that they cough up half a million bucks if they'd like to stop being oppressed is a hilariously good example of this, hence my use of rainbow colours.
If you're straight up threatening people, that isn't (or at least shouldn't) be considered under the umbrella of what trolling is.
Agreed. Unfortunately, as was already pointed out to you, this is irrelevant, because he wasn't "straight up threatening people".