Paul Chambers's original tweet, “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” was meant as a joke, but Judge Jacqueline Davis saw things differently. She thought the tweet was "menacing in its content," dismissing Chambers's appeal to the original sentence, a £1,000 fine.
Furthermore, Chambers has been ordered to pay an additional £2,000 to cover the legal bills, and lost his job as a financial manager as a consequence of his arrest.
Now, thousands of Twitter users are expressing support for Chambers, repeating his tweet together with a hashtag #IAmSpartacus, a reference to the film Spartacus, in which fellow gladiators express solidarity with Spartacus by uttering the phrase, "I am Spartacus."
The hashtag is now a global trending topic on Twitter, and Chambers's tweet has been repeated by thousands of users.
The incident raises several important questions. Was Paul Chambers really breaking the law when he joked about "blowing the airport" on Twitter? Subsequently, are all the Twitter users who have repeated the message breaking the law, too? Please, share your opinion in the comments.
Image courtesy of Universal Pictures