Start browsing the Web securely with three months free by going to express VPN dot com slash real life floor.

Have you ever written a mean comment about somebody here on YouTube or somewhere else on the Internet?

If you have, the worst thing that's probably ever happened to you is something like the classic Navy Seal copy pasta written back to you.

But for some other people, they've been sentenced to effectively life in prison for doing the exact same thing.

You see, it really all just depends on who the person is that you're making fun of online.

For example, if you're gonna make fun of me down in the comments of this YouTube video, the worst thing I could do to you is pin your comment and try my hardest to make you look like a clown.

But if you're going to make fun of the King of Thailand, however, you could face the rest of your life in prison, even if you don't live in Thailand.

And here's how.

Theoretically, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy like the United Kingdom or Japan.

But unlike in those countries, the monarchy is not only super super revered, but it's also illegal to criticize them.

The position of the Thai monarch in the royal family is enshrined in the Thai Constitution, which at one point states the king shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated.

No person shall expose the king to any sort of accusation or action.

So not only do we have those scary words toe work with, but Section 1 12 of the Thai Criminal Code also makes insulting or otherwise degrading the king or a member of the royal family a severe criminal offenses, it states verbatim.

Whoever defames insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir apparent or the regent shall be punished with imprisonment of 3 to 15 years.

That punishment of 3 to 15 years, however, is for each insult that a person gives to the king.

So if you were to hypothetically post five comments on a video such as this one that we're insulting in some nature to the King of Thailand, you would face five counts of 3 to 15 years in prison, each for a minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of 75 years.

And it's not just Thai citizens who could face such penalties.

The Thai government has convicted foreigners under the law as well, who have traveled to the country afterwards but who even is the king of Thailand they're not allowed to make fun of.

Currently, it's this guy named Maha Vajiralongkorn, who ascended to the throne back in 2016 after the death of his father.

The anti insult law applies to him his queen, the current heir apparent, and debated Lee every other member of the royal family as well.

So that's a lot of potential people that the law covers.

And it also doesn't help that the law doesn't exactly differ.

Find what an actual insult is.

It could be applied extremely broadly, and anybody is allowed to report anybody else for committing an insult.

And any report has toe always be investigated by the Thai police.

Insults against the monarchy are considered threats to national security in Thailand, so here's a few juicy examples from recent history.

In 2007, a man from Switzerland got aggressively drunk in Shanghai and began spray painting over some portrait of the king for some laughs.

He was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison, although he only served a month before being pardoned and released in 2000 and eight on Australian Man wrote a book about the various romantic scandals and entanglements at the Thai Royal Court.

The book sold exactly seven copies, but that didn't prevent the Thai police from arresting him upon his arrival at the airport in Bangkok during a trip to the country, He was sentenced to three years in a Thai prison but was pardoned after only a month and deported in 2000 and nine.

A Thai woman was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison after she delivered a public speech that mentioned the ruling class of the country in a way that was deemed to be offensive in 2011.

An American man was sentenced to 2.5 years in jail under the law while he was visiting Thailand for allegedly writing articles online that defamed the king and for posting a link on his Blawg to a book that was banned in the country.

He ended up serving seven months before being pardoned in 2012.

A Thai man was denied bail on eight separate occasions and sentenced to 20 years in prison because of four text messages he sent from his phone that were deemed a offensive to the king and queen.

Five years in prison for each text he sent in 2015 a 27 year old factory worker in Thailand was arrested under the law for supposedly making sarcastic comments about the king's dog on Facebook, which for reference looks like this.

According to the BBC, the man had posted multiple photos of the dog that appeared to mock the king, and in addition, he was also charged with posting the like button next to a doctored photo of the monarch.

He spent 90 days in prison for the crimes before being released on bail and faced a maximum penalty of 37 years in prison for the Facebook posts.

His current location and status of the case has been unknown since 2018.

However, it is also important to note that under the law, making fun of or insulting any previous Thai monarch is also considered a severe criminal offenses.

For an example of that, in 2017, a man made a remark while at a Thai University Forum that he doubted the existence of an epic Elefant battle in the 16th century between King Our Swan of the Thai Kingdom of Lesotho and the Crown prince of Burma.

This was considered insulting to a previous Thai monarch, even one who had been dead for over 400 years, and the man was subject to prosecution by the Thai authorities because of it.

The case was eventually dropped, however, but that hasn't prevented other ridiculous claims from being made in 2018.

A relatively famous Thai YouTube personality got in trouble under the law for describing a dress worn by the time Miss Universe contestant as ugly.

Unfortunately for her, the dress was designed by none other than Princess Sira Vannevar in Aria Tana, the only daughter of the current king Vajiralongkorn.

This got her into trouble for saying an insulting comment about the work of a princess, but others have gotten into far worse trouble for even less.

In 2017, a 34 year old man was arrested and sentenced to 70 years in Thai prison for simply creating 10 Facebook posts that were each deemed to be insulting to the Thai royal family the Thai court sentenced him to seven years in prison for each Facebook post, which is the harshest sentencing that anybody in the country has so far ever received for insulting the monarchy.

It was effectively a life sentence, but it was gracefully commuted in half for him toe only 35 years in prison because he confessed to being guilty.

Part of the problem with this law is that the media in Thailand rarely ever report on it or cover active cases, because even simply doing that can result in charges of insulting the monarchy for yourself.

So I realized that even by creating this video on YouTube, I've Patel essentially opened up a can of worms and gotten myself into some legal trouble in Thailand that could potentially restrict my ability to visit the country in the future, even though I feel like I haven't been insulting or degrading in this video at all, and I've simply Onley been reporting fax the facts themselves can be considered insulting.

However, if you were to hypothetically leave an insulting comment below and you ever go to Thailand afterwards, you could potentially face jail time there, and if you write multiple insulting comments.

You could even end up facing the rest of your life in prison in Thailand if you ever visit afterwards and get caught.

YouTube itself has even been blocked in Thailand on multiple occasions for videos exactly like this one, and I already know that this video is almost certainly going to be immediately blocked.

There.

You see, Thailand and YouTube worked out their differences a long time ago so that rather than blocking the entire website, their YouTube just agrees to block potentially offensive or harmful videos in Thailand.

For them, seeing is how other videos featuring farm or minor content and this one have been blocked under this agreement in the past, it's safe to say that this one will be too.

Internet censorship is not only a pervasive issue in Thailand, or even on YouTube, but across the entire world and across every website.

If you want to be able to access anything on the Internet wherever you are or if you believe in a free Internet and you want to do and see anything you want online, you should use express VPN.

I'm really excited to have them sponsoring real life floor because I've already been using express VPN now for years, and it's helped me out in so many different situations before.

It's just the best VPN of the many different ones I've tried because it's always simple, easy and reliable and with more people working from home now, VPNs are as important as ever to make sure that what you're doing online stays secure.

Express VPN assures that 100% of the data transfer between your device any Internet is encrypted, which provides an excellent layer of protection for everything you do online.

But my for favorite thing you can do, though, is being able to route your traffic through any other country so that you can not only be extra sure you're safe against any kind of government surveillance.

But you can also just get access to a bigger selection of online entertainment that's blocked or not available in the country you live in.

There are tons of videos on YouTube and Netflix that just aren't available in every country, but using this feature on express VPN allows you to effectively cheat and see them anyway.

Best of although you could get three months of express VPN for free when you sign up for a 12 month subscription by going to express VPN dot com slash real life floor and, as always, thank you for watching.