The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently documented a free speech case in which a woman was harassed and slandered over microblogs. The entire case caused Twitter to re-evaluate what their policies and procedures are in regards to profanities, identifying other users, privacy, and freedom of speech. In other news, the FBI has been using microblogs to accuse people of organizing protests that go badly--the most recent example was a man in Pittsburgh microblogging over the G-20 summit. John Burkoff, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh said, "Anyone can tweet, but the truth is, sometimes speech can be criminal." So how is expression on microblogs different than any other form of speech. Issues about legality of speech in the internet realm was not even generally resolved, now a whole other realm of gray area has emerged. This is not a little problem, the UK is struggling with microblogging laws as well. A newspaper in the UK was blamed for tweeting information about parliament. Extreme cases about mis-use of microblogs are also becoming a problem. For a new user who accidentally tweeted about mold in her house, ended up with a $50,000 dollar lawsuit thrown in her face. Some cases where one would expect a lawsuit simply go down as issues of really poor taste. Take Attorney Mark Shurtleff for example, tweeting about a death row man's impending execution. Where are we going to draw the line? When will laws and regulations about microblogging be set in stone?
Read more about Mark Shurtleff here: http://www.blogherald.com/2010/06/18/twitter-execution-message/
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