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Twitter Reveals User Details In UK Libel Case

Posted by timothy on from the phrase-your-subpoena-in-140-chars-or-less dept.

whoever57 writes "In a case that could have implications for the Ryan Giggs affair, Twitter revealed user details in response to a legal action filed in San Mateo county, CA by lawyers representing South Tyneside council. The alleged libel refers to critical comments made via Twitter. It is possible that one of the people making the critical comments is one of the council members."

6 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Could you stop, please? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs. Ryan Giggs
    My right to free speech is more important than the right to privacy of a public individual being protected by an abusive court order in a completely different jurisdiction. The fact that this is a legally enforceable order handed down by a branch of government makes it a political issue and thus political speech. If a court order was never issued in the first place people would have stopped caring by now.

  2. California company obeys California court order by ThreeGigs · · Score: 4, Informative

    Twitter is in California, and a California court ordered them to reveal information. Twitter is complying with the law.

    Try making it more relevant:
    Brits using American court system to sue Americans.

    Still News at 11 for me.

    1. Re:California company obeys California court order by jonbryce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well it is English people using the Californian court system to sue English people.
      Now they have the information they requested from Twitter, they will go back to England and take a similar action against the ISP. Then they will commence libel proceedings against the Twitter account holder; but if the tweets came from a cellphone connection - and twitter has a higher than average proportion of its visits from cellphones, the telco will only be able to say approximately which county the tweet came from, as lots of users share the same public IP address behind a NAT connection. For everyone else, there is the insecure Wifi defence.

  3. Freedom Of Speech, eh? by gowen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Freedom of speech does not include the right to slander or libel people you don't like, and it absolutely does not include the right to do so anonymously. You have the right to free speech - but you also must obey the libel laws, and you must be prepared to take the legal consequences of your free speech.

    --
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  4. Re:also, details by DrgnDancer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I believe truth is a defense in in US libel cases, which is where the case is apparently being tried. According to the Journalism about.com article: "Libel is by definition false. Anything that is provably true cannot be libelous. " I'll grant you that "about.com" is not he most reliable source ever, but I doubt they'd get this wrong. I realize that in the UK truth is not a Libel defense (which makes no sense to me at all, but no one asked me), but in California it almost certainly is.

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  5. Re:Nice try but wrong; UK does not have free speec by digitig · · Score: 4, Informative

    How about Article 10 of the European Declaration of Human Rights, which trumps UK law, and the government in question (the EU) does enforce it (via the European Court of Human Rights). Sorry, but this whole "The UK doesn't have freedom of speech" is just a US myth, like the myth that we don't have a constitution -- we do, and it's legally enforceable. It can be difficult and expensive to pursue a case, but I don't think the UK is alone in that.

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