Earlier this year, Paul Chambers expressed his frustration with the closure of Robin Hood airport because of bad weather with a tweet to his friend:

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!

The tweet was read by an employee of the airport who passed it onto the local police. Chambers was arrested, his mobile, ipod, laptop and computer taken by the police and he was charged the following month with sending a menacing message via a public telecommunications network, found guilty and fined £1000. He subsequently lost his job. The offence he was found  guilty of was sending a ‘menacing message via a public telecommunications network’ -  Provision 127 of the 2003 Communications Act:

Chambers appealed. His defence:

It did not cross my mind that Robin Hood would ever look at Twitter or take it seriously because it was innocuous hyperbole.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines hyperbole as:

A figure of speech consisting in exaggerated or extravagant statement, used to express strong feeling or produce a strong impression, and not intended to be understood literally. (my emphasis)

What seems incredible in this case is that hyperbole was not accepted in the initial judgement nor in the appeal process. Instead, Chambers’ message was taken literally even though, according to David Allen Green, Chambers’ lawyer, the employee who discovered and reported the tweet noted it amounted to a ‘non-credible threat’, the police who arrested Chambers subsequently didn’t think it was a serious matter, and the crown prosecution service admitted there was no evidence that the message amounted to a bomb hoax. If they all accepted that hyperbole was the rhetorical trope, why wasn’t the legal process against Chambers dropped? And what does this say for the status of hyperbole more generally as a legitimate, legally safe, form of expression?

Well, the signs are at the least, worrying. David Green sets this out in detail but in short, the judgement against Chambers was based on a reading of his tweet which denied (or worse enabled the court to ascribe) authorial intent. The crown prosecution service deemed the tweet to be menacing, the judge agreed and Chambers now has a criminal record. If that is the application of provision 127 then there are some serious consequences. Messages sent on public communications networks can include emails, website content, telephone calls, texts, etc. If context and intent are rendered inapplicable here then, following the judgement against Chambers, my own quoting of his tweet could also be a breach of provision 127. Along with hyperbole we would have to lose irony and sarcasm at the very least. Denotation would have to dominate connotation and context be deemed inadmissable in establishing the meaning of an (electronic) utterance. These are some of the logical consequences in the judge’s and appeal judges’ interpretation and application of provision 127. The Communication Act could act to stifle any meaningful communicative utterance.

That they don’t realise this speaks volumes about their understanding of communication. That they feel they need not understand it suggests their hubris knows no limits.

Of course there have been protests around this -especially this one on twitter.  Stephen Fry graciously offers to pay whatever fine the courts impose, but we should all be vigilante and vigorously oppose such abuses of freedom of expression in any ways we can.