It is a crime in the UK to say anything ‘grossly offensive’ on the internet. Under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 this offence carries up to six months in prison. As has been previously argued on spiked, the words ‘grossly offensive’ essentially give carte blanche to judges to criminalise anything they think is unpleasant or hurtful. In the past, people have been sentenced for posting a video on YouTube of a pug doing a Nazi salute and for an Instagram post referring to a rap lyric containing the n-word. More recently, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has turned the screw further and has started to use Section 127 to police private communications between friends. We got a taste of this a couple of weeks ago, when the High Court cleared the way for the prosecution of a man who had put a tasteless video about the Grenfell disaster on a private WhatsApp group. It is now clear that this was not a one-off. Two people have since been given prison sentences for sharing an offensive video in private groups on Snapchat. A man called Jake Henderson recorded a 50-second rant on a mobile phone in January. In it,…
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The state should not police private Snapchat groups – spiked
