03/02/2020 Chambers v Director of Public Prosecutions [2012] EWHC 2157 (Admin) (27 July 2012) This is the judgment of the Court. Introduction 1. This is an appeal by way of case stated from the decision of the Crown Court at Doncaster (Her Honour Judge Davies and Justices) on 3rd March 2011 upholding the conviction of the appellant in the Magistrates Court for sending by a public electronic communication network a message of a "menacing character" contrary to s.127(1)(a) and (3) of the Communications Act 2003 (the Act). 2. Section 127 of the Act addresses the problem of the unlawful use of the public electronic communications network. It provides: "(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he – (a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or (b) causes any such message or matter to be so sent. (2) A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he (a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false, (b) causes such a message to be sent; or (c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network. (3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both. …" 3. Section 32 of the Act provides that electronic communications network means: "(a) a transmission system for the conveyance, by the use of electrical, magnetic or electro-magnetic energy, of signals of any description: and (b) such of the following as are used, by the persons providing the system and in association with it, for the conveyance of the signals – (i) apparatus comprised in the system; (ii) apparatus used for the switching or routing of the signal; and (iii) software and stored data. (2) In this Act "electronic communications service" means a service consisting in, or having as its principal feature, the conveyance by means of an electronic communications network of signals, except in so far as it is a content service… (3) In this Act – a) References to the provision of an electronic communications network include references to its establishment, maintenance or operation … (7) In sub-section (2) "a content service" means so much of any service as consists in one or both of the following – www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2012/2157.html 2/10