Written by
Amani Ayuba
Head of Chambers
Successive amendments narrowed section 24, but charges persist. What the appellate authorities now require before speech becomes an offence.
Discuss this matter →Successive amendments narrowed the offence, but charges under the Cybercrimes Act continue to be laid against people for things they wrote online. The gap between the statute as amended and the practice on the ground is now the central problem.
What the amendment changed
The provision as originally drafted criminalised messages that were, among other things, grossly offensive or intended to cause annoyance. Those formulations were struck at because they gave no reliable notice of what was forbidden. The amended provision is narrower: it requires a threat of harm, or conduct amounting to a course of harassment, and it attaches the offence to intention rather than to the reaction the message provoked.
What the courts now require
Appellate authority has moved consistently in one direction. A prosecution must establish, on the face of the material, that the accused intended the specific harm alleged, and that the conduct went beyond a single instance of criticism. Three propositions can be treated as settled.
Offence taken by the complainant is not, without more, evidence of intention
Criticism of a public figure in their public capacity attracts the widest protection
A single publication will rarely constitute a course of harassment
The statute punishes threat and harassment. It does not punish being wrong, rude, or unwelcome.
Where charges still succeed
Convictions continue where the record shows persistence and targeting: repeated publication after a demand to stop, disclosure of a person's location or movements, sexual content published without consent, or messages that identify a family member. In those cases the harassment limb does real work, and the amendment does not assist the accused.
Advising a client who has been charged
The first task is documentary, not rhetorical. Assemble the complete publication history in sequence, because the course-of-conduct question turns on it. Identify whether the complainant is a public official acting in a public capacity. Establish whether any demand to desist was made and what followed it. In a significant number of matters, that exercise alone reframes the charge.
Where the material is plainly within the protected range, an early application challenging the information is preferable to a full trial. Where it is not, the client is better served by being told so at the outset.
This note is a general commentary on the law as at the date of publication. It is not legal advice and should not be relied upon in place of advice on your own facts. For guidance on a specific matter, speak to one of our lawyers.
