The issue, as the article says, is that the law doesn't define what an insult is. That means that a death threat or saying "you're stupid" could potentially both be prosecuted under this law.

That stems from the fact that any definition of an insult will be either incomplete or incorrect.

Not saying you're wrong, but why is this a fact?

Surely for a legal purpose you could make a pretty solid definition. If you want it to be fully black and white, you could enumerate all 'banned' insults.

> why is this a fact?

It is a rhetorical flourish, but my gut says that language is complex enough to craft statements that both meet the legal definition but aren't insults, or are insulting but don't meet the legal definition.

I'm also discounting circular definitions like insults are statements that are insulting which are tautological, but don't reveal any extra clarity.

> you could enumerate all 'banned' insults

I'd argue that this is not possible due to the set of insults having at least countably infinite cardinality.

It's irrelevant if the set of possible insults has infinite cardinality since we only care about the actual insults litigated on. If there is an insult which isn't in the list, the courts could decide if it fits their definition and through precedent it would be implicitly added to the list.

It's very relevant if you want a 'perfect' definition/insult list, but noone in policy land aims for perfection because they live in the real world.

A death threat is clearly different from an insult. And I'm not sure why you lump death wishes in with threat. Those are also clearly different.

Death threats are different, but insults can also lead to death (there's already an history of suicide as a direct result of sustained bullying)

In a distorted way, insults can have more critical consequences that threats.

No they are not. At least not in the so called civilised countries.

A threat of action is different than mean words. A threat of action is a violent act, where as saying mean things is just rude. A threat of action is a crime in multiple countries.

>“At the moment, even if someone calls the leader of Japan an idiot, then maybe under the revised law that could be classed as an insult,” Cho said.

You think someone who calls their leader an idiot should be jailed?

" MATTHIAS: Look. I-- I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.'

CROWD: Oooooh!

OFFICIAL: Blasphemy! He's said it again!"