It’s Actually Illegal To Be Racist On The Internet, by Josh Butler on the very PC HuffPo.

[T]here are more restrictions on what you can say online than what you can say face-to-face, an online abuse expert told The Huffington Post Australia. Dr Andre Oboler is is CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute. He has a PhD in computer science and a law degree. …

There are laws governing the use of telecommunications devices — phones, internet, messaging services — to abuse someone. Oboler said those same laws and anti-abuse protections do not necessarily apply to words said out loud in a public place, meaning that someone can be free to speak abuse in public but prosecuted for saying it on the phone or writing it online. …

A NSW man was charged in May for calling then-senator Nova Peris “a black c***” on Facebook. The man was given an eight-month suspended jail sentence and a two-year good behaviour bond. …

Free speech? Not really. The politically correct get to interpret the law.

Section 474 of the Criminal Code Act outlines that it is an offence to use “a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence” in a way that is “menacing, harassing or offensive”.

[D]espite the common defence that what some people call “abuse” might be defended by others as “free speech”, that Australia does not have an explicit right to free speech in the same way as the right is outlined in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

This is a political bureaucrat’s dream for selective enforcement — where they can exercise their prejudices and prosecute those they don’t like.

Opposing the politically correct is by definition “offensive” — how often do the PC tell their opponents they are offensive? For example, do they find Donald Trump or Pauline Hanson “offensive” perhaps? Are “deniers” of the carbon dioxide theory of global warming “offensive”? What about the opponents of to same-sex marriage?

hat-tip Mark Ellis