Teens Arrested For Rapping Order In McDonald's Drive-Thru? OH JEEZ

[OhZone]

Originally Posted by wolfman-al

I think its good that they were arrested. They were acting like morons and wasting peoples time. We have here in Germany a law that prohibits "Groben Unfug" (which translates to "crude Nonsense") in public. It basically means if you annoy or irritate people in public or disturb public peace and order by acting consciously, intentional and deliberatly, while beeing not under the influence of alcohole or drugs (this part is important), like a jackass, you can get cashed. You dont have to go to jail, but you have to pay a massive fee (up to a few thousand Euros). It is kind of the RL-counterpart of a temp-ban for trolling. The only problem is that it is quite hard to define what "Crude Nonsense" is, since everybody has a different tolerance level to bullshit.

OHMY! Germany? Still? Oh, well. I think the fact that "crude nonsense" is a little hard to define is extremely bad, but clearly the US laws of disturbing the peace can sometimes be a little hard to define too.

I'm for a middle road here. You have to allow some playfulness as it would be against freedom of speech. At what point does it go over the line? The typical example is "yelling FIRE in a crowded theater" (when there is no fire). Obviously, that can cause panic and people to hurt themselves, unnecessarily. At what point does pranking people become disturbing the peace or harassment? It's a little tough do define, but I think you have to allow a lot of leeway here! Think of the youtube videos! Please won't someone think of the youtube videos?