An Australian court rules that a mortgage company can issue notice of a lien over Facebook. A court in the UK permits an injunction to be served via Twitter. A woman is arrested in Tennessee for “poking” someone over Facebook in violation of a protective order. Meanwhile, a 1978 provision of the Bankruptcy Code still provides that notice shall “be published at least once a week for three successive weeks in at least one newspaper of general circulation.” New forms (and norms) of communication are both expanding and contracting the avenues for legally meaningful notice. Just how do we know, in this uncharted new landscape, when notice is enough?
Two aspects are likely to be crucial. First, the communication must be sufficiently engaging to reflect the gravity and context of the relevant legal process. Communications exist on a spectrum of engagement from light and fleeting to sustained and captive. In the context of a protective order, where one person found another sufficiently disturbing to appeal to a court for relief, a “poke” is enough of a communication to constitute a violation. A tweet, however, represents a drop of water in a river of communication. It is far too fleeting to support service of process.
Second, the communication must be directed to the relevant community or communities. The police are on Facebook and MySpace; where's the Miranda warning page so we can all become "fans"? We should also update our laws to reflect the twenty-first century sea change toward new media. Reorganizing a municipality under Chapter 9? Better start thinking about DirectTV and Google Reader.
This reminds of the recent news story about people being served via facebook ^-^;
I feel that internet world is changing. Thanks for the information. Its useful.
actually had to see it coming - there have been many cases of people putting videos of illegal stuff they did on their myspace and facebook pages (dumb!) and then getting charged for the crime - and all the evidence they needed was the profile page! Got to be more than that though as anyone can get someones pictures and make a fake account - a form of blackmailing someone, not really sure how the "internet police" would handle something like that though :)
Jason
I really enjoyed reading this article - I especially like the last part, where you say that it is time, that we update our laws to the needs of the 21st century. Let's just hope thy do it right...
Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see,Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked),Photos, where users can upload albums and photos,and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. They can also write some research papers to each other to show their knowledge in some sphere.
WOW, this is ridiculous. Its definitely true that the law isnt written and up to date with whats going on today, but seriously.. This is crazy haha. Next well be receiving subpoenas and stuff through text messages!
Arrested for poking someone on facebook?!
My gosh, what is the world coming too these days?
Thanks for the post
- Johnny
I had to read several parts the "poke" issue. A woman was arrested for poking? Please clear that out for me. Prague b&b
OK - well the word 'poke' isn't very nice, including associated connotations but isn't this going a little too far?! Social media and the way we communicate has changed a great deal over the last couple of years. I guess some people haven't understood that. Hopefully common sense will prevail. Very interesting read.
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