- Friday, 27 November 2009
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If the good guy gets the girl, it's rated PG; if the bad guy gets the girl, it's rated R; and if everybody gets the girl, it's rated X - Kirk Douglas
Don't send your pub jokes to the Plod
A UK MAN who habitually sends jokes he hears in the pub to his mates via text messaging has just landed himself in serious hot waters with the police authorities.
By mistake the joker had incorrectly entered the telephone of one of his friends into his mobile phone. So instead of a drinking buddy, the number actually belonged to a serving police officer.
The texted jokes were completely uncensored and could easily be construed as offensive. Given that the jokes were all topical, the sender hadn't given a thought to how they might be received by a total stranger.
This could lead to a very interesting court case as none of the intended recipients would even remotely object to the content.
Potentially the mobile network operator could get into trouble as well as being the unwitting purveyor of offensive material.
To give readers a clue, one of the jokes was based around the lyrics to Living next door to Alice by pop band, Smokie. Google it.
The perpetuator told the INQ that all the jokes were a "bit of a laugh" and were meant to be harmless. Lucky he sent them to a police officer and not a minor, then. ยต
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I haven't actually seen the joke(s?), but I don't think the guy should get punished. Even if they were sent to a minor instead of a police officer, it's a simple typo. If I got jokes that made fun of Jesus, I'd just respond and tell them that they screwed up and sent them to the wrong person.

I'm not familiar with the laws where you are, but free speech is still free speech. If someone posts something offensive, but to the wrong person, I don't think they should suffer for it. That includes offensive posts accidentally sent to children, hate speech accidentally delivered to the hated, and people stupid enough to support John McCain.

This is a bit off-topic, but it's way too easy to go to jail here in the US, and I'm not just talking about misplaced texts.
You wonder how one manage to text a message to the wrong person since all your mates' numbers are in the phone's memory.
Also I wonder if that copper is also in the process of suing every single spam emailer that mails him, and if so how he finds the time.
You also wonder if this story is true at all.
The exact same article is published here : http://www.satpimps.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88565

right down to the reference to the Inq, but without any acknowledgement - so I suppose they scraped it off you guys.
So, are you going to do a Ryanair on those guys, or just send Vinnie ?