Legal system cracking down on Twitter use

Two items of legal news today could make IT departments more nervous about allowing staff access to social networking applications like Twitter.

The first case involved Paul Chambers, who was fined £1,000 for a joke bomb threat tweet in May. Chambers had his conviction upheld today, and was ordered to pay an additional £2,000 in legal costs.

"Judge basically called me a liar and found me guilty again! Thanks for the support today, from everyone on here and all who turned up at the court. You've kept a weary man on his feet," he said in a Twitter post.

In January, Chambers had expressed his annoyance at delays at his local airport by posting a tweet that read: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"

A member of staff passed the message on to the police, and Chambers was arrested at his workplace and fired shortly afterwards.

Comedians such as Dara O'Briain, Stephen Fry, Jeremy Hardy and David Mitchell have since rallied to Chambers's defence.

"So that's the banning of sarcasm, irony, sub-text and any of the other subtleties of language that we use AS GROWN UPS," said O'Briain in a Twitter post.

The second case involved a Conservative Party councillor from Birmingham who was arrested after he tweeted that it would be a blessing if newspaper columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was stoned to death.

Gareth Compton has been charged under section 127 (1a) of the 2003 Communications Act on suspicion of sending an offensive or indecent message.

"It was an ill-conceived attempt at humour. I apologise for any offence caused. It was wholly unintentional," he said.