It's a defamation case. Journalist David Bendels posted a doctored picture of politician Nancy Faeser holding up a sign saying, "Ich hasse die Meinungsfreiheit" ("I hate freedom of speech"). Faeser filed criminal charges against Bendels for "üble Nachrede und Verleumdung" (defamation).
Bendels was sentenced to a 7 months suspended sentence and a fine of 1500 Euros, has to remove the image and apologize to Faeser. Bendels will appeal the decision.
I'm going to guess that this will be overturned on appeal. Every country has stupid courts that make bad decisions. I think this is kind of an edge case between satire and defamation, since Bendels is ostensibly a real journalist who reports on real facts—it seems odd to me that he would publish doctored pictures. Still, I think this will lean towards satire in the end, since I don't think most reasonable people would assume the picture of Faeser was real.
Having to clarify satire ruins its point. In a case against a man who creatd a fake Facebook page of his police department and was subsequently raided, the Onion submitted this amicus brief: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
It's really quite interesting to read at some point, but I believe that nobody should have to "clarify it was doctored". Because that image was also very obviously fake - it's literally a meme template, and nobody should be prosecuted for that. I do have to question your judgement if you believe that is real.
I honestly don't really understand how it is not obvious, so I question if those decisions are made in bad faith. It's literally a meme template, and that's somehow not obvious?
I'm not speaking from a legal standpoint, I'm speaking from a common sense moral one. We cannot cater to the most mentally challenged in society to make sure they cannot harm themselves.
Satire is entirely ruined once you put a /s behind it. Let me quote the Onion here -
The court’s decision suggests
that parodists are in the clear only if they pop the bal-
loon in advance by warning their audience that their
parody is not true. But some forms of comedy don’t
work unless the comedian is able to tell the joke with
a straight face. Parody is the quintessential example.
Parodists intentionally inhabit the rhetorical form of
their target in order to exaggerate or implode it—and
by doing so demonstrate the target’s illogic or absurd-
ity.
Put simply, for parody to work, it has to plausibly
mimic the original.
The Online Safety Act in the UK has been discussed here before and it is part of a general trend to prevent "harmful" speech including specifically "legal but harmful speech".
After the man posted the image, Robert Habeck (the politician in question) made a criminal complaint. When the Criminal Police investigated the case, they found additional evidence against the man, which prompted the search. His house was not searched for calling Habeck an idiot, but calling him an idiot triggered the investigation, which triggered the search.
>The politician in question has filed more than 700 criminal complaints about what people have said about him
I'm not sure why that matters in the context of this discussion. He is free to file as many criminal complaints as he wants, no? Living in a free society means that idiots can do idiotic things like filing 700 criminal complaints.
>The problem is that merely insulting someone can be a crime at all
I disagree that this is a problem per se. Pretty much all jurisdictions across the world have laws like that. It really depends on how exactly the law is implemented.
In fact, American libel and defamation laws are, in some ways, more problematic than many European ones simply because of how the legal system works. If you are sued in a place with no SLAPP laws, the mere lawsuit can be so expensive that it can have a chilling effect on free speech, even if the defendant ultimately wins the case.
(I do agree that laws singling out politicians are stupid.)
