Japan criminalizes online insults

As of yesterday in Japan, you can be prosecuted for "insulting on the Internet"punishable by a prison term of up to one year.

People convicted of online insults can also be fined up to 300,000 yen (approximately 140,550 rubles).
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At the same time, it is specified that the law will be reviewed in three years to determine whether it affects “freedom of expression,” as critics of the bill have said.

Interestingly, there are no clear definitions of what constitutes an insult, Seiho Cho, a lawyer, told CNN after the law was passedThe law states that insult meanshumiliation of a person without stating a specific fact about him/her – as opposed todefamation, which is classified as humiliation of a person with a specific fact about him."At present, even if someone calls the leader of Japan an idiot, then perhaps under the revised law it canbe qualified as an insult," Cho said.