by A Doncaster man has been found guilty of sending a ‘tedious electronic communication’ and fined £1000 for posting messages describing his monotonous dilemma over his lunchtime eating habits on the social networking site, Twitter.
Paul Chambers, 26, claimed he sent the Tweet in a moment of indecision after the deli counter was temporarily closed at his local Sainsbury’s supermarket.
A district judge ruled the Tweet was “of a tedious nature and likely to ruin the lives of those who read it for several seconds”.
The Tweet he sent to his 600 followers at lunchtime on 6th January read, “Sainsbury’s deli shut. What sandwich to buy? Cheese? I like cheese. But maybe not cheese. Something like cheese would be nice.”
The court heard that although the tweet had no operational effect on the running of the supermarket, all staff were put on high alert for sandwich aisle loiterers.
Rules
The Criminal Prosecution Service has come in for criticism after pursuing the case against Chambers, even though he only ever intended to bore his own friends witless.
A CPS spokesperson told us, “Yes, we’ve had to invoke a little understood and never used piece of legislation in order to prosecute him, but what choice did we have?”
“Messages on Twitter are in the public domain and people take them seriously. This man’s mind-numbingly tedious Tweets could seriously affect the lives of others.”
However one Twitter fan explained, “Look, I don’t believe everything I read on Twitter, people make stuff up all the time.”
“Only yesterday someone I follow described Miley Cyrus as a musical genius – now by the letter of the law I should call the authorities and have that person sectioned, but I chose to ignore it.”
The ruling has cast doubts on the future Twitter activity of many users, with many vacuous elebrities expected to be in prison by the end of the month.
