“agreed...name and shame them..so disrespectful and heartless act from ppl who may never know the suffering of losing a child/children..”

“Totally shocking a certainly needs to be removed!
Need everyone to back this and get rid of the page.”

“Sharon, I think you'll find that such evil "jokes" are criminal and so you should report it to the police as soon as possible.”

“I just went on to facebook to see what the fuss is actually about. I cannot believe what I read,it made me feel physically sick. I also cannot believe that we breathe the same air as the filth who find such a subject "funny". I hope that the police track them down so we can all see their faces in the newspapers.”

“I agree that it is sick and needs to be removed, however all you have done is drawn attention to this page, therefore gaining it notoriety!”

“I think that you'll find that sick or evil jokes are not in themselves criminal. That's why Facebook hasn't removed the page. That said, they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for hosting such a page. Facebook is supposed to be a social network. Well, ha ha.”

“Can these people not be named and shamed to their employer, nieghbours or friends? That would shut their sick mouth.”

“Sick, sick sick. There is just about nothing on this earth that can possibly be worse than losing a child whatever age. But to lose a baby is as bad as it gets. What goes through their sick minds, to find the death of children funny. I agree with Qwerty, name and shame them and let them face the consequences.”

“Everything is offensive to someone.”

“this is terrible,we live in a sick society.”

“Protection from Harassment Act 1997

It is an offence for a person to pursue a course of conduct "(a) which amounts to harassment of another, and (b) which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other." 'Harassment' is defined as behaviour causing alarm or distress. In addition to criminal offences the Act also authorises civil courts to award damages and make injunctions in harassment cases.”

“@Hoof_Hearted2 - thanks for the quote, useless as it is.”

“Oh dear, you don't get it do you? As sick and horrible as the subject surely is - and believe me I do not condone it in any way - the more of a fuss you make the more groups/pages are going to be created with the title "Dead baby jokes". This is in effect an act of "trolling" which is making you walk straight into doing what the group/page owners want to do - publicise their page. I wonder how many people having read this have run a facebook search for this group and not only found it, but 20-30+ groups like it?”

“glosmuso is right.”

“Alfredo, it's far from useless, not my problem if you don't understand it, it's all a matter of extrapolation.”

“Hoof, "harassment" has to be aimed at someone. This is an internet page that no-one has to access unless they want to. It's like pornography - you'd have to go onto the page in order to see it.”

“This is not trolling. Just because you may have read some daily mail article sensationalising a hollow threat a teenage boy put in the comments section of a Justin Bieber YouTube video and the farcical court case that went along with it (to give a generalised, fictional, example of such nonsense that sadly occurs so frequently nowadays) does not mean that you can just pronounce things as offensive and demand its removal. If you don't want to see such material ... click the little 'x' in the corner of the screen.

The 'point' of dead baby jokes has also been totally misconstrued. The humour (though I can accept that some people still will not find such things amusing) intended in a dead baby joke is in the absurdity of the extremity of the fate of the deceased child. The thing that makes people read them is the taken aback factor of 'Omg did I just read that?!'. In this way they are akin to the text message jokes that invariably go around following any kind of natural disaster or death of a prominent figure. Nobody is laughing at the loss of life, nor the pain of the family left. In the case of dead baby jokes the baby is completely fictional and unconnected to any grieving relatives or anything. Such criticism is like stopping someone in the middle of an 'Englishman, Irishman, and Scotsman' joke and saying 'but, but, but I know an Irish person and they aren't stupid ... I'm offended'.

Furthermore, much of this modern knee-jerk reactionary litigation (as regards 'trolling' - a separate issue) stems from misuse of or misunderstanding of the purpose of the internet - primarily by those who have 'come late to the party'. The internet, including Facebook, should not be a true extension of your real life. At best its a social 'enhancer' and networking tool. Not so many years ago the main advice given to those using the internet was to maintain anonymity, more or less, at all times. It is in this environment that sharing dead baby jokes grew up. They have been an internet phenomenon since the 1990s. Just because you can now buy 'this Acer laptop 2gb RAM and a 320GB Hard Drive, £299, only while stocks last at PC World', and cheap broadband, doesn't mean you can come in all guns blazing shouting out your name and address and expect everything to be fluffy and lovely, without even stopping to try and understand the platform from which you are spewing the details of your mundane life. A little common sense must be applied.

If a 14 year old boy living in Borneo threatens to kill you because somewhere on the internet you have expressed an opinion what do you think are the chances of that actually occurring? Before ringing the police and then the local newspaper ask yourself A) Have they really got a genuine reason to harbour such animosity? B) Do they have the means to carry out such a threat? C) Do they have the level of expertise required to find your exact location based on the limited information you have on the internet? If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes' then by all means alert the authorities; but I'll be willing to bet that 99.9% of the time the answer to all three will be a resounding 'no'. Yes trolling is stupid and very often offensive but the reality of it is that trolls are sad, lonely and ill-educated people who get a kick out of imagining your reaction. They are stupid people, not dangerous people. If you are concerned about genuinely dangerous people making threats then I suggest you look to the numerous international terror organisations operating at present.

The internet is something that should be taken with a pinch of salt. Part of the beauty of the internet is that it allows you to be who you can't be in real life and saw what you can't say in real life. Because of this I will always defend people's right to troll.”

“Harassment' is defined as behaviour causing alarm or distress"

No, it doesn't have to be "aimed". If just one person complains at the content of these pages claiming that they're alarmed or distressed by it, that's good enough.
The Obscene publications act also comes into play as obscenity doesn't just mean pornography.”

“If the profile is called dead baby jokes then maybe it is easy to avoid (if you get offended by that sort of thing). Just chill by realising that the same behaviours that offend you will probably much more negatively impact the lives of the people making the jokes as their online aberrant behaviours creep into their offline lives. There are plenty of real causes to fight in the real world I suggest you shouldnt waste your time fighting the nature of the Internet and use it to make positive things happen (childhood death support Facebook page?).”

“hoof - if the group is illegal, then so is Frankie Boyle and he's on TV. You can buy books on Amazon with those jokes in them, too, and they're not illegal. Neither should they be - much as you don't like them, taste has never been a prerequisite for being published.

Out of interest, which particular piece of legislature does this breach?

Just ignore it.”

“Hoof,there are far tighter rules governing the broadcasting of offensive material on TV than there are governing the publication of offensive material in a book or on the internet.”

“I was banned from getting on my facebook account for a week a while ago because someone was going around reporting people for being offensive. There was nothing offensive on my page at all yet i was banned on the say so of someone being a fool. Im sure i am not the only person to have reported the dead babies page - yet it is still going. Unbelievable.”

“@Hoof_Hearted2 - it's completely inappropriate to quote that Act because no one's being harrassed. If the telling of jokes fell under the Act then all comedians - all of them - would be locked up.”

“I think J_Roc nailed that baby (metaphorically speaking).”

“People will always find something to be offended by. They may have to look really hard to find it, but still...let's not let a bit of rationality and sense get in the way of a Daily Hate Mail style spewing of righteous indignation, ill informed bile and mock outrage shall we?”

“Really!? Leave it alone! I'd never heard of this group till someone on my friends list started banging on about it. I went to see what all the fuss was about and found a page full of people complaining about the page and one half ****d joke.
If you stop scratching it the itch will go away. If i'd lost a baby and was still morning the last page I would be clicking on would be 'dead baby jokes.'
Congratulations all you've succeeded in doing is make this page a million times more well known than it was.”

“Hi Sharon, I've reported them on Facebook so hopefully the page will be taken down.

Unfortanatly some scumbags are around these days. They certainly wouldnt be laughing if anything like that happened to them.

I think its good you highlighted this sharon. Have you reported it to the police as I think you should?”

“@matthewjaggar - hopefully the page won't be taken down.”