“Reporting is not harassing.” The slogan is all found and, if he did not invent it, Booba knew how to get a legal argument out of it, to the point of attacking those who equate his recurring attacks against certain influencers with cyberbullying.
On June 5, Booba captured Arcom (ex-CSA) against radio or television programs in which he was presented as a cyberbully. “There is an essential principle, which is the presumption of innocence,” explains one of his lawyers, Me Gilles Vercken, to Tech & Co.
Never stingy with good words, with more or less aggressive pikes, the Hauts-de-Seine rapper has made Twitter his best weapon to denounce “influencers”, a contraction of influencers and thieves. For more than a year, he has been attacking former reality show stars turned videographers, followers of product positioning, on a daily basis.
Some exhibit a luxurious Dubai lifestyle and generate controversy for their practices: unreported advertising, dangerous product promotions… not to mention these “bargains” of mediocre quality or that never reach their recipients.
Cyberbullying vs. defamation
The jungle is such that a new law to regulate the profession of influencer ended up being approved at the beginning of June after a fierce media campaign by a collective of victims, the AVI collective and various free electrons, including Booba.
But on Booba, the alert is always fierce and the tweets sometimes flirt with insult. If he could target Dylan Thiry or Marc Blata, two of the most controversial influencers, he mainly attacked the influential agent Magali Berdah, who accuses him of cyberbullying. A complaint was filed against the rapper – he was placed on assisted witness status on April 6 – who returned the favor by attacking him for defamation.
However, some of his tweets, which were removed by the platform but can be tracked on the Archive.org site, have caused shock.
On April 21, she posted a photo that suggested it was an excerpt from a Magali Berdah sex tape. “And you’re going to stop bugging me with your sex tape story. I’ve never shared a sex tape of you. It’s not my fault people say it’s you in the photo,” she wrote.
A few days earlier, he released the exclusion letter from Magali Berdah’s daughter, revealing the address of the school group. An accusation dismissed by the rapper’s lawyer: “He published a letter of exclusion from Mrs. Berdah’s daughter dating from 2020, which is well before the denunciation of fraudulent business practices by influencers. Her daughter no longer belonged to the establishment long before the publication of the letter” he assures Tech&Co.
“He has no herd”
Article 222-33-2-2 of the Penal Code punishes with one year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros “the act of harassing a person through comments or repeated conduct that has as its object or effect a degradation of their living conditions that produces a deterioration of their physical or mental health (…) when these facts have caused total incapacity for work of less than or equal to eight days or have not produced incapacity for work”.
And this rule applies regardless of what the courts may hold against Magali Berdah about her business practices.
But beyond Booba’s messages, the agent especially points to the thousands of insulting messages she received in the wake of the rapper’s attacks. “It destroyed my life, it didn’t change my life. It really destroyed my life,” she explained last January on BFMTV. “Because, when you open your phone, you get insulted, you open the Internet, you see your address broadcast, you have to move.”
The law of August 3, 2018 also introduced the notion of “digital attack” in cyberbullying to punish the avalanches of insults that social networks have become a specialty of. Again, the rapper’s lawyer denies any incentive effect. “Booba expresses himself personally. He doesn’t have a ‘pack,'” he sidestepped.
The rapper recently eased up on tweets against Magali Berdah. But ultimately, it will be justice that will decide on his responsibility.
Source: BFM TV
