You do understand how incredibly slippery, steep, and short the slope is when you start jailing people for "offensive" posts on the internet, don't you?
I generally subscribe to JS Mill’s approach to freedom of speech. There is a time and a place. It is the difference between printing leaflets saying corn dealers murder the poor, and actually standing in front of a corn dealer’s home in front of a mob and repeating the same thing.
This guy went to a tribute page for the little girl and deliberately whipped them up. If he wanted to make these jokes on his own website, or blog or youtube or whatever, then fair enough, he has a right to make a complete ass of himself, but its a different matter all together to go and impose yourself right on the people who will be most upset for no better reason than your own sick gratification.
If someone really is vile about my mother at her funeral, and it can be deemed disturbing the peace, inciting a riot, I’d get them arrested.
Let’s say they come up to me nice and calm and say it to my face. Someone should throw them out, knock them out, and maybe you get arrested for it. But we want to live in a violence free world and the government meets out all the violence. I’d prefer good old fashioned outrage.
What you say makes sense however i bet we could agree as to what constituted not free speech but rather a vile attack.
That is not to say that agreed upon meaning would not be warped at some future date by a judge but that’s another story altogether.
This story i do not see as free speech.