Private conversations and standards of propriety: DPP v Cobban

Journal article

Abstract:: This comment considers the decision of the Divisional Court in DPP v Cobban, looking at the application of s 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and the compatibility with Articles 8 and 10 of the ECHR. The comment argues that the decision is significant in imposing a criminal restriction to uphold standards of propriety in relation to a closed conversation between consenting adults. The comment also questions whether the reach of the decision can be limited to a context that involves police officers. The decision points to the limited protection of expression rights and highlights the ongoing problems of s 127 in applying a standard of gross offence in a speech crime.

Files:: Rowbottom_2025_Private_conversations_and.pdf

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Language:: English
Keywords:: freedom of expression

gross offence

private messages

expectation of privacy

Article 10
Pubs id:: 2079177
Local pid:: pubs:2079177
Deposit date:: 2025-02-21
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_78a89e2254134e27ab0ee0ae46e0fe6e

Copyright holder:: Jacob Rowbottom
Rights statement:: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in anymedium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow theposting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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