1. On 11 June 2010, the Appellant (calling himself “Ghost Valley”) posted on the HKGolden website discussion forum the following message in Chinese: “We have to learn from the Jewish people and bomb the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government # fire #” (English translation). It was one of a number of messages on the discussion forum related to proposals for political reform in Hong Kong. 2. The Appellant was charged with the offence of “committing an act outraging public decency”, contrary to common law. The common law offence requires that the act complained of be of such a lewd, obscene or disgusting character that it outrages minimum standards of public decency (the nature of the act element), and that the act be done in a place to which the public has access or in a place where what is done is capable of being seen by two or more persons who are actually present, even if they do not actually see it (the public element). The Appellant pleaded guilty before the Magistrate. On the sentence day, he applied for leave to reverse his plea to one of not guilty on the ground that the facts admitted did not support the charge. The Magistrate refused the application and sentenced the Appellant to 12 months’ probation. The Court of First Instance dismissed the Appellant’s appeal. The Appellant appealed to the Court of Final Appeal. 3. The Court unanimously allowed the Appellant’s appeal. It acknowledged that whether the internet was a public place for the purposes of the offence of outraging public decency was a novel issue. It held that the public element of the offence required the act to be committed in a physical, tangible place. The internet was not a place in any physical or actual sense. Readers of the message on the internet discussion forum might be in various places when they accessed or downloaded the webpage. They might have their sense of decency outraged in those actual places, but not in some virtual place. The internet was a medium and not a place for the purposes of the offence. Accordingly, the public element of the offence was not satisfied. 4. The Court pointed out that the effect of holding that the internet was not a place for the purposes of the offence did not mean that the offence could never be committed by a message posted to an internet discussion forum. It was possible for a message on an internet discussion forum to be seen in a physical place to which the public had access or where what was done was capable of public view. However, there was an absence of sufficient evidence in the present case as to whether that might have been the case. 5. As to the nature of the act element of the offence, the Court held that the nature and content of the message was such that it was open to the Magistrate to find that it was obscene or disgusting and such that it would outrage public decency. The message was a straightforward and unambiguous incitement to carry out an act of terrorism. That the incitement was to bomb an office of the State and was expressed together with a racist slur were aggravating features. 6. Finally, the Court expressed the view that there is a strong case for introducing statutory provisions to address the mischief of lewd, obscene and disgusting material posted on or communicated via the internet.