SD v watson 2025 Crim 68
SD v watson [2025] Crim 68
| Date of judgment | 3rd June 2025 |
| Judge | Judge Britz |
| Charges |
|
| Verdict |
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| Sentence | Permanent Ban (10-month ban for charge of Spamming) |
| Applicable persuasive precedent |
JUDGMENT by Judge Britz
Introduction
[1] The state has charged the defendant, watson, with one charge of Spamming and one charge of Terms of Service Violation. This was a trial in absentia.
On the charge of spamming
[2] During the pre-trial, the defence pleaded guilty to the charge of spamming due to the clear fact the defendant was mass pinging, and the defendant is to be sentenced accordingly.
On the charge of a Terms of Service Violation
[3] Firstly, the court would like to resolve a main issue during the trial, which was whether the state of SimDemocracy should enforce the Discord Terms of Service. The court understands, from the criminal code, Article 63 §1, that whoever breaches the Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, or other binding document of the platform where the crime is committed, in a manner in which SimDemocracy is expected and able to enforce, commits the crime of Terms of Service Violation. Using self-bots is explicitly stated as unacceptable in the discord community guidelines, which therefore makes an individual who has committed a crime such as self-botting, liable under this article as to have committed the crime of a Terms of Service Violation. The defendant not only possessed a self-bot, but utilised it, which poses a threat to the integrity of the State. In terms of the nature of the messages, the court believes no human is capable of producing the sheer quantity of unique messages in that amount of time. The messages themselves do not resemble human speech, with phrases such as “Rate Limited: 443” indicative that a self-bot has been used, despite the fact the defence claims the owner of the account would not have done this as to not incriminate himself. However, further evidence for the account being a self-bot is the clear lack of account customisation, which could imply that the account was used for the sole purpose of self-botting, and thus, the defendant wouldn’t care if he was found guilty of being a self-bot. Whilst the owner may have attempted to frame another user for use of the bot through a fake user ID, this could have been hardcoded, and not manually typed. The court has not considered this fact in its judgement due to this ambiguity, but the evidence is already overwhelming that the account was a self-bot.
Verdict
[4] The Court has sided with the prosecution in that the defendant has used a self-bot to spam a series of messages in a very short amount of time. The court finds that it is its duty to uphold the Discord Terms of Service especially in instances such as this, even though the State of SimDemocracy may not, realistically, be prosecuted for failing to enforce the self-bot section of the community guidelines.
Therefore, the court finds the defendant, watson, guilty of one charge of Spamming, of which they are sentenced to a 10-month ban, and one charge of Terms of Service Violation, of which they are sentenced to a permanent ban.
Citations
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