03/02/2020 Chambers v Director of Public Prosecutions [2012] EWHC 2157 (Admin) (27 July 2012) (c) If so, was that interference necessary in a democratic society for one of the reasons listed in Article 10(2)? (4) In all the circumstances, was the Court correct to conclude that the message sent by the Appellant crossed the threshold of gravity necessary to constitute a message 'of a menacing character' so as to amount to a criminal offence within the meaning of Section 127(1)(a) and (3) and was the Court correct to convict the appellant on the evidence and sentence him as it did?" 20. We propose only to deal with the issues necessary to decide this appeal. Public electronic communications network 21. It was agreed before the magistrates that the appellant's message was sent using the "Twitter" social networking site which fell within the description of a "public electronic communications network". It was, however, a ground of appeal to the Crown Court that the message was not sent by a public electronic communications network. By the date of the hearing in the Crown Court there was a formal admission in these terms: "Twitter is a privately owned company which operates via a public electronic communications network. Messages which are posted on the Public Timeline of Twitter are accessible to all those who have access to the internet". Nevertheless Mr John Cooper QC on behalf of the appellant sought to argue that the appellant's message was not sent by means of a "public electronic communications network". He submitted that this was a "tweet" found by means of a subsequent search, and so should be treated as no more than "content" created and published on a social media platform rather than a message sent by means of a communications network. It would, he submitted, be a dangerous development to extend the ambit of s.127(1) of the Act to "Twitter". He relied on the words used by Lord Bingham of Cornhill in the context of "grossly offensive" telephone messages under consideration in Director of Public Prosecution v Collins [2006] 1 WLR 308 (Divisional Court) and [2006] 1 WLR 2223 (House of Lords) that the section addressed "a service provided and funding by the public for the benefit of the public". Therefore, he contended, the section was primarily concerned with such messages sent by the telephone system and so with voice telephony. 22. When we examined the issue in argument, Mr Cooper accepted that a message on public "Twitter" is accessible to all who have access to the internet, and therefore, by inference, to the public, or to that vast section of the public which included anyone who chose to access a timeline consisting of any of the posted key words by use of a search engine. 23. In her judgment in the Crown Court Judge Davies addressed this issue when rejecting a submission that there was "no case" for the appellant to answer. She said: "The "Twitter" website although privately owned cannot, as we understand it, operate save through the internet, which is plainly a public electronic network provided for the public and paid for by the public through the various service providers we are all familiar with … The internet is widely available to the public and funded by the public and without it facilities such as "Twitter" would not exist. The fact that it is a private company in our view is irrelevant; the mechanism by which it was sent was a public electronic network and within the statutory definition … "Twitter", as we all know is widely used by individuals and organisations to disseminate and receive information. In our judgment, it is inconceivable that grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing messages sent in this way would not be potentially unlawful" 24. We agree with this approach. As Mr Robert Smith QC submitted on behalf of the Crown, the potential recipients of the message were the public as a whole, consisting of all sections of society. It is immaterial that the appellant may have intended only that his message should be read by a limited class of people, that is, his followers, who, knowing him, would be neither fearful nor apprehensive when they read it. www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2012/2157.html 6/10