Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 April 12

= April 12 =

Cyberbully case
I remember reading about a case about cyberbullying on Wikipedia, but now, I forgot the perpetrator's name. It was a very famous case in UK. What's his name? He's a computer scientist living in UK. He has harassed many women online. It took law enforcement many years to catch him. He was sentenced to around 20-30 years. Thanks! 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:5D61:6880:607E:9862 (talk) 11:34, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Matthew Hardy (stalker). 2A00:23D0:482:5E01:C5A6:5743:7A53:A342 (talk) 12:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * On appeal, Hardy (unemployed, AFAICT not a computer scientist) got only eight years in the slammer. Another famous (and sad) case is that of Amanda Todd. The perpetrator was sentenced in Canada to 13 years in prison, to be sat out in the Netherlands. In what is somehow not a famous case, a longer sentence (17 years) was dealt to cyberbullying TikToker Lorenzo Arana from Island Park, New York. --Lambiam 15:02, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * User:Lambiam Matthew Hardy (stalker) is probably not the person I'm looking for. I remember distinctively he is a computer scientist and very intelligent. 2600:6C44:117F:95BE:9488:F560:901D:9673 (talk) 09:52, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
 * For clarity are specifically referring a case prosecuted in the UK? If so I think your memory could be faulty. AFAIK, 20-30 years is an extremely long prison sentence for someone in the UK. I have doubts it would be handed out to someone for cyberbullying unless perhaps it involved a lot of underage victims and perhaps blackmailing them akin to the Amanda Todd case or there was some other extreme aggravating factor allowing it to be prosecuted as more than simply bullying. I'd note that the Matthew Hardy case, was said to be the longest sentence for cyberstalking handed out in the UK. While that might be cyberstalking not cyberbullying, if anything that would seem to involve a longer sentence [//www.localsolicitors.com/criminal-guides/the-law-on-cyberbullying] [//www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/stalking-or-harassment] [//www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/cybercrime-prosecution-guidance] Nil Einne (talk) 04:40, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Royal baccarat scandal
I’m confused by this article. It says gambling on Baccarat was illegal at the time of the scandal, but the participants in the all-important game seem to have been playing for money. Yet the scandal was about cheating rather than breaking the law. So were they breaking the law or not, and if not, how were they not breaking it? Dronebogus (talk) 13:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * In response to someone raising the precedent that baccarat was illegal, the Home Secretary (Henry Matthews) pointed out to the House of Commons on 26 February 1891 that the case in Jenks v. Turpin "was played in a house kept for playing at that game, and that was rendered illegal by statute. The case is familiar to the Law Officers". The jurist Sir James Stephen in an article in the July issue of The Nineteenth Century seemed to think the game was legal as it was played in private and not in a house kept for the purpose. &mdash;Simon Harley (Talk). 15:02, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That’s helpful. I think the article needs to clear that up, especially since it seems to imply that playing for money is itself the illegal thing. Dronebogus (talk) 11:56, 13 April 2024 (UTC)