The legal precedents around Twitter continue to be established at a rate of knots this week, driven in part by everyone being uber keen to tweet about the Olympics (although not always in a nice way).

Yesterday we posted on several legal wranglings involving Twitter; those of Guy Adams of The Independent newspaper, the anonymous user behind @UnSteveDorkland and teenager @Rileyy_69. In less than 24 hours, there’s been progress on all three.

Guy Adams

Bit of a bad one for Twitter, this. It turns out Twitter workers originally alerted NBC to Adams’ critical tweets of the news outlet’s coverage of the Olympics. This resulted in his account being suspended. Twitter has now published an apology, admitting “we did mess up”. Adams’ Twitter is back up and running, but the questions around Twitter’s reputation won’t go away overnight. It’s likely this example will be dragged up time and again when a user is accused of something untoward. This leads us to…

@UnSteveDorkland

Today, 1^st August, was the deadline for Twitter to handover details of the user behind @UnSteveDorkland, a spoof account of Northcliffe Media’s chief executive Steve Auckland. Handing over user details is well within the rights of Twitter’s T&Cs, if the site receives a complaint from a third party about said user’s account.

However, Twitter also provides details of how the user can acquire legal aid. This, combined with a high level of media attention for the case, led pro bono layer Frank Sommer to take up the case. He’s now filed a motion to halt the disclosure order from Northcliffe. According to the BBC, Sommer has stated “I have been unable to find any website that lists this controversy in terms of someone being deceived that any of the Twitter usernames listed in the subpoena are anything other than a satire on Mr Auckland.”

Take that out of legalise and it simply means if an account is obviously a spoof, there’s no case for taking it down or even handing over a user’s details. The difficultly here is defining exactly what counts as ‘obvious’ in a court of law. Amazingly, this could reach a court room (if Northcliffe decides to push on) on 2^nd September. If this happens, presumably we’ll get a clear ruling and precedent on what can and can’t be deemed an overtly satirical, spoof Twitter account. Good luck reaching a verdict on that one. 

@Rileyy_69

Finally, the rather unpleasant case of @Rileyy_69 appears to have been settled. After the 17 year old behind offensive tweets to Olympics diver Tom Daley was arrested, he was released with a harassment warning. Clearly this wasn’t a case that would ever make it to court, but hopefully one that shows you can’t get away unscathed with vicious comments on Twitter anymore than you would saying it to someone’s face (although you’re far more likely to get arrested, and less likely to get punched in the nose, it seems).

@simonhill

Bit of a landmark in the law and social media worlds came to light yesterday. Chris Cairns, a former New Zealand cricketer, won a libel case against important Indian cricket type Lalit Modi. What’s interesting for none cricket fans (me) is this is the first ever settled libel case involving Twitter.

Some time back in January 2010 Modi made an ‘accusation’ on Twitter (which seems like a fancy legal way of saying ‘tweeted’) that Cairns was involved in match fixing. This being the world of sport, word spread pretty quick and it wasn’t long before Cairns’ career was in tatters. But it seems, as far as Johnny law is concerned, Cairns has never put a thickly gloved finger out of line, and he’s been awarded £90,000 in damages (subject to appeal).

What this does mean, aside from you shouldn’t accuse someone of match fixing unless you have at least a sprinkling of proof, is a solid line has been draw with regards to defamation cases that start on social media.

To grab Wikipedia’s definition, defamation is “is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image”. As is usually the case with legal issues, there are some specific distinctions but broadly speaking think of defamation in two forms; slander and libel. Slander is a statement in line with the above that is spoken (a transitory or non-permanent statement), while libel is written or printed words, images or video – and when it comes up in court we’re usually talking scandalous accusations regarding monogamy-challenged footballers. 

The outcome of  Cairns’ case means the content of mine, yours and anyone else’s’ tweets can be tried as libel in a court room setting – and is considered a permanent form of publishing just as much as a physical newspaper, online article to spokesperson video. It’s an important point to note when tweeting, especially considering the ease of access you have to Twitter on your PC or phone, the often impromptu nature tweeting and that fact we don’t always distinguish tweets as either spoken or written (‘He said on twitter’ vs ‘He posted on Twitter’).    

For PRs this means you must take extra care when tweeting for a client, and it’s also a good idea to keep an extra tight eye on any high-risk spokespeople’s activity online to boot. 

@simonhill

Disclaimer: I have no interest in cricket and have been stretching my brain to its limits to remember the ins and outs of libel, slander and defamation from when I read media law, which was a fair few years ago now. For any inaccuracies this has caused, I am deeply apologetic.