Vileness on the internet: if even jail sentences don't make people stop and think...

The news that the utterly uncharming individual who used Twitter to make anonymous rape threats against Stella Creasy and Caroline Criado-Perez has been sentenced to eighteen weeks in prison is a positive development in the effort to police the internet against the sort of abuse that, in any other medium, would be stamped out forcefully.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not keen on censorship online, but where behaviour that has been legislated against on grounds that are generally accepted as reasonable, it should be punished wherever it appears, and the internet cannot, and should not be, an exception. And, if there is anyone out there who thinks that anonymously threatening someone with rape is acceptable behaviour, they need help, not sympathy or tolerance.

I have long been of the view that the internet has enabled all sorts of good things to happen yet, at the same time, it has provided some people with a means to coarsen public interaction without consequence. Public figures appear, too often, to be fair game for the sort of vile abuse that would never be proffered in real life or printed form, as a sample of even such mainstream media as the Guardian's comment sections will demonstrate. And don't start me on Guido Fawkes's blog...

It puzzles me that so many people just shrug their shoulders and say, "that's the way it is", without wondering why the distance between the public and those that serve us has widened. For, if engagement begets abuse, why engage at all? Why not simply broadcast messages and not encourage discussion or exchange of views? Life is too short to provide a means for people to be abusive towards you.

There must be consequences for those who use any means to engender hate, or fear, or to abuse and intimidate others, and I welcome Monday's verdict. That a Member of Parliament felt it necessary to install a panic button in her home as a result of the behaviour of a rather sick individual should act as a sobering reminder to those who think that such behaviour is without consequence.