Message ultra: one message, six offences

Research method

Message ultra

“You are so ugly because your mother was raped by a dog. [A threat to kill the recipient.] [An opinion praising a proscribed organisation.] [A claim the sender knows is false, chosen to frighten the recipient.]”

The insult is the specimen from the absurdity paradox chapter. The parts in brackets are described, not written. We do not publish a real threat, and we never express or invite support for a proscribed organisation. The law turns on what each part does, so the description is enough for the analysis.

The House of Lords accepted that context is everything: a scriptwriter emailing menacing dialogue to a director is unlikely to break the law. A page analysing a hypothetical message is a different act from sending one.

Legislation, summarised by us

The layers

Maximum sentences are taken from each statute, or for section 181 from the CPS guidance. Sentences in real cases are usually far below the maximum.

Statute and House of Lords judgment

1. Grossly offensive or indecent

Sent over a public electronic communications network, which any messaging app uses. The offence is complete on sending, whoever reads it. The threat in the message would also make it “menacing”, another limb of the same section.

Statute

2. Sent to cause distress

Sent to another person, indecent or grossly offensive, with a purpose of causing that person distress or anxiety.

Statute

3. A threat to kill

Section 181 covers a message conveying a threat of death or serious harm, where the sender intended the recipient to fear it would be carried out, or was reckless about that. Serious harm includes grievous bodily harm, rape and serious financial loss. It replaced the threat limb of the 1988 Act for messages sent from 31 January 2024.

A threat that is plainly a joke may fail on the mental element. In Chambers, the High Court said that if a sender may have meant a message as a joke, “even if a poor joke in bad taste”, the mental element for the menacing form of section 127 is unlikely to be proved. Here the threat sits inside a message designed to hurt, which makes that argument much harder.

Statute

4. A lie told to frighten

Section 179 covers a message conveying information the sender knows is false, sent intending to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience, without reasonable excuse. Here the likely audience is the recipient. It replaced the old false-message offences.

Statute

5. Support for a proscribed organisation

Section 12(1A) makes it an offence to express “an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation” while being reckless as to whether a person to whom it is directed will be encouraged to support one. A direct message has a person to whom it is directed. The maximum on indictment is fourteen years.

This is the most serious layer and the one with the most live litigation. The Speech offences register follows the Hamas and Palestine Action cases, including the acquittals.

Statute

6. Sending it twice

Harassment needs a course of conduct: conduct on at least two occasions in relation to one person. The second message supplies the second occasion, but two occasions are the minimum, not proof. The prosecution must also show that the course of conduct amounts to harassment and that the sender knew or ought to have known it did. Speech counts as conduct, and harassing includes causing alarm or distress.

Our analysis

It is not libel

Sent privately, it is published to nobody but the person it attacks, and libel needs publication to a third party. If it were posted publicly, the insult would still read as mere vulgar abuse, and nobody’s reputation would be seriously harmed. The person with most reason to complain about the factual claim, the mother, is not the person who received it. The full reasoning is in the absurdity paradox chapter.

Our analysis

It is probably not obscene in the 1959 Act’s sense

The Obscene Publications Act asks whether material tends to “deprave and corrupt” those likely to read it. A crude insult, however revolting, is not what that Act is for. The word “obscene” in section 127 is a separate question.

Our analysis

Charging and proportionality

Prosecutors apply the evidential and public interest tests and the guidance on freedom of expression, and avoid charging the same words several times over. The threat and the terrorism layer would drive the case. The communications offences would probably fall away as duplication.

The point of the exercise is the overlap. Four statutes, passed between 1988 and 2023, now reach a single direct message from different angles, each with its own test. The gaps between them, and the decisions about which to use, are where most of the arguments in this category take place.