Everyone from the local fruit & veg shop to the Barrack Obama uses Twitter these days and now the Court Systems appear to be jumping on the band-wagon.
London High Court have made an unprecedented ruling by allowing a defendant in a case to be served with an injunction via micro-blogging site Twitter.
The order is to be served on behalf of a blogger called Donal Blaney who is pursuing an unknown Twitter user. The user’s name is Blaney’sBlarney, the same name as the blog Blaney uses to express his political opinions. Blaney claims the user is posing as him and is breaching his copyright and intellectual property.
The injunction, demanding that the imposter stops posting as Blaney and immediately identifies his or herself has been dubbed “Blaney’s Blarney Order”.
As the order is from a different jurisdiction it is not binding on the Irish courts in the same way an Order from The High Court here would bind lower courts. However it can be used a pursuasive precendent should a similar set of circumstance come before the court.
For info on Twitter Law check out TwitterLaw.net and here is Blaney’s own post on the matter.
[img ©DarrenByrne2009]
Is there absolutely no way to remedy a situation like this via the company Twitter, rather than having to go to court?
@Niall - Honest answer, I don’t know.
I am sure the terms of Twitter set out terms & conditions in their usership registration but I supose the size of the site means they can’t be held accountable for every action of a subscriber.
I would think that it’s possible for Twitter to be joined as a co-defendant and for an order to be made by the court ordering Twitter to suspend the account of this “imposter”.
I just think it’s a facintaiton precendent. What next? Facebook service? Gmail?
Well, surely it’s a publicity thing for the law firm? There would have been plenty of ways to make this go away quietly - simply contacting Twitter may have done it. It seems this is just Griffin Law’s way of gaining some column inches. It’s a fascinating story though and I commend them for it.
Ridiculous PR stunt IMO. Twitter is the most high profile piece of tech at the moment so creating a story featuring it gets you column inches.