Really? What grounds, just out of interest?
What about telling them “woe betide thee”? What-o 
It’s defamation.
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Oo dear
regrets ever speaking to anyone
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I just won a lawsuit from someone defaming me by publicly insulting me.
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Surely that must apply to basically any negative or critical comment though? Where’s the line?
Otherwise Mr Trump would have a lot of lawsuits on his… Oh
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When in Rome…
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Pretty much! That’s why I use a lot of weasel words and allegedlies when i write reviews.
The food is not bad. I just didn’t like it.
But publicly and directly insulting people is a crime.
If a foreigner does this. You might even get some treatment from THE ONE, THE ONLY… KEOOOONNNIII…EEEEVVVERRINGTON!
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Really?! We need the details! (But split the thread, please 
)
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Nope. I’m keeping quiet on this one. Don’t want to open the possibility that I get sued. I don’t even have to win, if they see such a thing online, they might try to waste my time and money.
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Ok. You tell me over a beer when we meet in person, then 
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It sounds like public insult (Art. 309), not defamation (Art. 313), though I suppose they often overlap.
https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawParaDeatil.aspx?pcode=C0000001&bp=44
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Yeah, Sorry. I let my lawyer do my lawyering with the legal mumbo jumbo.
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One can be imprisoned for publicly insulting a dead person?
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That’s what it says. 
It’s a bit extreme.
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Interesting. if the law is literally as it is written in that article, it diminishes freedom of speech to a certain extent then?
In Eng-er-land the Defam Act was updated quite recently such that you needed to provide evidence of reputational damage as a result of the text and it had to be unfair, therefore ratings and criticism is ruled out. Apparently previously if you had a post even saying something like ‘I am an idiot’ and people liked it, then the people liking it were open to defamation.
I read all this at 4am and as a result now exhausted and feel like crap 
That’s defamination of the highest ordah! 
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I don’t think it diminishes freedom of speech, but it can be hard for most of us to adjust to. For Americans, it might diminish their definition of freedom of speech because the perception there is that it’s an unlimited right.
There’s a difference between saying the food is bad and that you didn’t like the food. One is presented as a factual statement and the latter is an opinion. You’re not being stifled in your opinion, just being…politically correct in how you phrase it.
Is the food objectively bad? Probably not. Chinese culture doesn’t really have understanding or recognition of our subtext as we understand it. There’s a whole history and the perverse incentive the law has created but I am not gonna get into that here.
There is also the public insulting. We know that Chinese culture puts great emphasis on ‘face’.
Being insulted in a public setting might be considered as loss of face and it’s not another’s right to declare one anything.
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That’s fascinating, actually. I’ve never fully comprehended the ‘face’ thing, not something that concerns me (to which I consider a privilege that a lot don’t havw, sadly) hence i’m sitting in a corporate office wearing a bobble hat with a beach ball on my desk.
Thanks for the insight, I appreciate the explanation!
So… are things said on Forumosa subject to TW law or…? 
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While I understand the…facetious nature of your post, it’s true.
You could probably sue someone here for insulting you publicly on a post. A boss could probably sue you for libellous claims. I don’t know of a single case of which a forum member sued another one, but not only are personal attacks against forum rules to begin with, but taking forum battles to the real world is also a forum offence.
I am going to reckon that @GooseEgg is likely going to be less than thrilled to be wasting time dredging up deleted posts for a court case with the police knocking on the doors of Forumosa.
Now, public insults and defamation are actual criminal offences, but usually people just want to go the civil route. It’s cheaper for both parties. The victim gets compensation and is not paying for lawyers and court fees and the perpetrator doesn’t have to pay with a criminal record, court fees, lost time, costs, fines, and possible prison time. Definitely speaking from experience.
A lot of recognised liberal democracies have different interpretations on what constitutes freedom of speech. Most are unlike the US which seems to be a more literal interpretation of an unlimited right to freedom of speech, or as I call it, the freedom to offend.
Many countries ban hate speech and consider speech that oppresses another to be outside the scope of freedom of speech. Nobody’s stopping you from your opinions, but they must not oppress another. It’s like where my right to punch you in the face ends just before your nose begins sorta way. Taiwan, Japan, Korea certainly incorporate Asian values into their rights and freedoms law. I certainly don’t endorse one or the other, but if you look closer, you can certainly see sprinklings of Asian values in Taiwanese German-Inspired civil law.
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