Social media news, online communities and journalism The law should not be playing catch up with social media The astonishing rise of social networking in the last few years has taken many by surprise. One institution that has failed to keep up is the law. Watching your dad struggle with Twitter may be quite endearing, but people having their liberty taken away due to an out-of-touch judiciary is extremely serious. Matthew Woods , an unemployed 19 year old man from Lancashire, is currently serving a 12 week jail term for posting grossly offensive Facebook comments about missing schoolchild April Jones. Without question, Mr Woods is a moron (to put it generously) and the remarks were distasteful in the extreme. But there is no way he should have gone to jail. The law should not have been involved at all. To put the matter in perspective, comedian Justin Lee Collins was given only 140 hours of community service for a sustained campaign of psychological and physical abuse against his girlfriend. Comparing the two cases, Ian's Hislop's famous remark comes to mind; "if that's justice, then I'm a banana". Ultimately, it's a question of freedom of speech. Broadly, freedom of speech is restricted (and the author or speaker guilty of a criminal offence) where a comment threatens national security or incites hatred. Mr Woods certainly didn't threaten national security.  A case could be made that he was inciting hatred, but no right thinking person would have been incited to anything but revulsion.