North East England, and California. There's not much in common between the two, I should know, I'm from the North East. So what could possibly connect the glamorous West Coast of America with the cold and baron land of Tyneside? The answer is Twitter. The law is struggling to keep up with modern times and there is little precedent in cases involving social networking. One aspect of this is whether authorities can put legal pressure on websites to hand over details of their users. Worryingly enough, it seems like they can.
An anonymous Twitter user named Mr Monkey was tweeting "libellous remarks" against the South Tyneside local authority. As you would imagine, South Tyneside Council wanted to find the monkey as soon as possible (Insert Hartlepool related joke here.) They took the case all the way to Twitter HQ in California and demanded the site hand over the users details in what is said to be the first case of its kind in the UK, at a cost of £75,000
The council in question said of the matter: “Twitter have released information to our lawyers and this is currently being analysed by technical experts.” The information being: the name, address, email address, telephone number and geographical location of the users behind five Twitter accounts.
The news comes after Lib Dem MP John Hemming kicked up a fuss by naming Ryan Giggs as the man behind the Twitter, superinjunction nonsense.
Whatever happened to Freedom of speech?
In other news, Twitter is said to be planning to launch its own photo upload and sharing service this week. The company’s CEO, Dick Costolo, is expected to make the announcement at the D9 conference in California.
One thought on “Tyneside Council Force Twitter To Reveal The Identity of Mr Monkey”
I have kind of touched upon this on my own site, and the problem you are having is like most cases on the internet in the fact no one knows which laws stand and which don’t. The trouble with the internet is that there are no borders so one law might not apply some where else and this is a prime example of this.
Now the question has to become in my mind is when is it time for someone to come together and discuss a set of laws for the internet to suit everyone. I know its going to hard to near enough impossible thing to do but something as big as the internet it needs it now.
The problem then becomes then though is the internet was brought together so people could share information freely amongst each other and if laws are put in place it might hamper that freedom some what.