Twitter airport bomb threat case to go to High Court
23.11.10
The man convicted and fined for a Twitter message saying he planned to blow up Robin Hood Airport will appeal the decision in the High Court. Paul Chambers, 27, was convicted in May for sending a menacing electronic communication. An appeal earlier this month failed to overturn the conviction, sparking outrage amongst Twitter users.
The accountant, formerly from Doncaster but now living in Belfast, will now be represented by high-profile human rights lawyer Ben Emmerson. The challenge will centre on whether or not section 127 of the Communications Act, under which he was convicted, was ‘appropriately applied’.
The lawyers regard Mr Chambers' conviction as a test case, as it was the first time that the Communications Act was applied to an offence on a social network. David Allen Green, his solicitor, said: ‘We want to establish what constitutes a menacing communication, what should be the level of intent required for the offence to be committed, and whether or not Paul's message was sent by means of a public electronic communications network.'
Doncaster Crown Court recently upheld his original conviction, causing a wave of outrage on Twitter, with thousands of supporters retweeting Chambers' message, which read: ‘Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!’ The so-called ‘I'm Spartacus’ campaign was inspired by the famous scene in the 1960s blockbuster, when slaves stood up one by one to claim ‘I'm Spartacus’ in order to save their fellow conspirator from detection.
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