Note to self: just punch them

Seppo Lehto got 2 years 4 months for many counts of defamation and libel (it seems to be the same offense here).

I don't doubt that Lehto has insulted and defamed pretty much everything that moved, and I do think that libel should be a criminal offense. But 2 years 4 months? In Finland?

For comparison, the Wikipedia article that refers to the statistics from the year 2002 says that for an aggravated battery, 62% got a suspended sentence, 2% got community service and 37% got a prison sentence, and the average suspended sentence was 12.5 months, and the average prison sentence was 18.1 month.

Aggravated battery in Finland is a battery that causes a serious injury, is dangerous to one's life, is done in a cruel and unusual way or is done with a deadly weapon.

OK, granted, those are sentences for one aggravated battery, and Seppo Lehto committed many defamations, but damn, there should be some sense of proportion. Something is seriously wrong when defaming people on the Internet brings a longer sentence than punching those same people in the nose would.