I can totally understand the need for things like laws against cyber-bulling or stalking but as one 15-year-old-boy in Rhode Island is finding out the simple act of sending a message over the web to a 16-year-old girl that makes her feel uncomfortable can end up with you facing domestic violence charges.

So now the simple act of making someone uncomfortable can find you in court and possibly in jail.

Police say the 15-year-old Barrington boy met a 16-year-old girl while taking classes this summer and they started to talk through Facebook.

But police say the 16-year-old felt uncomfortable when the messages started getting inappropriate.

Police started the investigation in July and now they’ve charged the minor with cyber stalking, which is now punishable under the domestic violence prevention act.

via WPRI.com

I hate to point out that being uncomfortable is a constant of teenage life and when you add in puberty and the hormone wars that are going on it can lead to some strange things being said; but being charged for domestic violence?

Isn’t that going just a tad too far?

Even the originator of the Rhode Island law didn’t see her law being used like this.

Making someone “uncomfortable” online could get you charged with domestic violence is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the benefits of our rapidly improving technology is that it puts ways to easily record events and the people involved in them in the hands of the average citizen. While some see this as a good thing and an equalizer of power there are others that are really afraid of that kind of accountability that results from being easily recorded.

It has gotten to the point where police and others in power are trying to convince us that turning this lens or microphone of accountability on those in power is a bad thing and should be illegal. Photographers are constantly having to remind police of their constitutional rights to be able to document events. People are having to go to court to fight charges by the police for recording what these public servants are doing.

Now we have Judge Richard A, Posner of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit who thinks that all this recording by citizens of the police will lead to more snooping around by reporters and bloggers.

At the heart of this is the motion from the ACLU to strike down a particularly offensive law in Illinois that makes it illegal to record someone without their consent, even though the recording is done openly and in a public place.

He [Judge Posner] was particularly worried that allowing recording would impact police work. “I’m always suspicious when the civil liberties people start telling the police how to do their business,” he said. He speculated that gangs would love the ACLU’s argument because recordings would make it easier to discover and retaliate against informants.

via Ars Technica

Luckily for us Posner’s fellow judges don’t feel the same way and appear to be being swayed by the ACLU arguments.

Both of Posner’s fellow Seventh Circuit judges seemed more receptive to the ACLU’s argument. They reserved most of their fire for the government’s attorney. “The statute criminalizes any audiotaping without regard to expectations of privacy, even if those events that are being audiotaped occur in the open, in public, for anyone to see and hear and otherwise observe,” one of the judges said. “It’s extremely broad.”

via Ars Technica

Finally, a little bit of sanity.

Recording police will lead to “excessive snooping” says Judge is a post from: The Inquisitr

Back in January and April of this year my colleague Kim LaCapria  and I wrote here about a growing trend of state courts what amounts to carte blanche in accessing your mobile phone location data from your provider without the need of a warrant.

First it was California where the California Supreme Court agreed:

“The majority opinion, written by Justice Ming Chin, cited precedents from the U.S. Supreme Court, saying the contents of a cell phone are like the contents of clothing or a cigarette pack found on a suspect’s person. The U.S. Supreme Court has found that those types of searches do not require a warrant under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the court said.”

Then along comes April and Kim relates the fact that Michigan State police have the ability using a technology from CelleBrite to make a duplicate of your cellphone contents without the need of a warrant. In her post Kim quotes the ACLU stance on this.

“With certain exceptions that do not apply here, a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer determines that there is probable cause to believe that the search will yield evidence of criminal activity,” Fancher wrote. “A device that allows immediate, surreptitious intrusion into private data creates enormous risks that troopers will ignore these requirements to the detriment of the constitutional rights of persons whose cell phones are searched.”

One of the arguments against the police being able to do this is that their actions could violate our Fourth Amendment rights; and for the most part the courts have sided with the police and saying it doesn’t.

However on Monday Judge Nicholas Garaufis, of the Eastern District of New York totally rejected this line of reasoning.

The federal government had asked the courts to order Verizon Wireless to turn over 113 days of location data about a suspect’s cell phone. It did so under a provision of the Stored Communications Act that only requires law enforcement to show that the records are “relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Does the government violate the Constitution when it obtains location data without meeting the Fourth Amendment’s “probable cause” standard? Some courts have found that it does not. But in a 22-page opinion, Judge Garaufis analyzed and rejected these other courts’ arguments, holding that law enforcement needs a warrant to obtain months of location data.

“The fiction that the vast majority of the American population consents to warrantless government access to the records of a significant share of their movements by ‘choosing’ to carry a cell phone must be rejected,” he wrote. “In light of drastic developments in technology, the Fourth Amendment doctrine must evolve to preserve cell-phone user’s reasonable expectation of privacy in cumulative cell-site-location records.”

via Ars Technica

It’s nice to see that like the judge in Ohio we have a Federal judge who is forward thinking enough to know that technology is a rapidly changing landscape and our interpretations of the Constitution need to be constantly adjusted to keep up with the changes.

That whole no warrant needed for your mobile phone location info – not so fast says Federal Court is a post from: The Inquisitr

Picking juries is tough and there are companies out there making lots of money as jury consultants to lawyers. Then there is the increasing number of problems being faced by the courts over jury members disobeying judges as they Twitter comments while paneled or researching the case on Google.

There is no denying that the Internet and social media is having an effect on the justice system but know it seems that trial lawyers are turning to Facebook when selecting jury members.

While some countries simply select a jury at random and only excuse members if they have a direct link to the case, the US uses a jury selection process. This involves lawyers questioning a pool of potential jurors, with each side having the right to reject a certain number with (in most cases) no reason required. The idea is to allow both sides the opportunity to eliminate jurors who might be particularly biased against their case.

The Facebook research doesn’t seem to be as much about bias as looking for particular personality types. For example, if a potential juror comes across online as an aggressive personality with strong opinions, they could dominate the jury deliberations. That might make the outcome more unpredictable, which makes the person a bad pick for a side that feels confident it has the evidence on its side.

There are some more specific reasons for concern. A defense lawyer might look out for somebody who notes on their profile that they are a keen fan of crime procedural shows such as CSI: such jurors may place too much weight on the reliability of DNA evidence (and the fact that it does a much more reliable job of discounting a link than it does proving one.)

via Geeks are Sexy

What do you think? Should things like Facebook and other social media tools be banned from the legal court system?

Jury selection gets the Facebook treatment is a post from: The Inquisitr

I was wondering how long it would be before this tactic would succeed but according to Kit Eaton at Fast Company two Hollywood giants have scored a major win against Triton Media and set a huge precedent in the courts in the process.

The tactic in question is what is referred to as contributory infringement and inducement to infringe and it was the argument used by lawyers for Disney and Warner Bros. in their lawsuit against Triton Media, a web advertiser. The basis of the argument is that by providing ads to sites that primarily exist to stream video without paying any licencing  fees Triton Media was contributing to copyright abuse, or at least that is how the argument goes.

The damages are levied against Triton Media, which the courts have thus found guilty of “contributory copyright infringement” and “inducement to infringe.” Triton’s crime is an odd one: Providing a web ads facility to websites including free-tv-video-online.info and watch-movies.net. These sites, part of a longer list, are accused of illegally providing streaming access to content that they haven’t licensed from the content owners–the latest bane in the life of Hollywood studios and TV companies the world over. Their business model is simple: At low cost to themselves they provide a point of access to someone else’s popular TV show or movie, their viewers are attracted by the big-name shows available and the fact they don’t have to pay. In-page ads return a small revenue stream to the site owners, much as they do for pretty much every other web site out there.

So the big unanswered question in the room now is – given that the vast majority of pirate type sites run Google AdSense will Big Media have enough of a precedent, and backbone, with this win against Triton Media to go after Google?

Loss to Disney and Warner costs Triton $400k. Is Google next? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Amazingly there is other news that just the constant and increasingly boring iPad stories.

That is if the fact that the FCC lost in the courts to Comcast is of interest as you tear yourself away from the App Store and put your wallet away. The general consensus is that it is a good thing that the FCC did lose because it is felt that the Commission was overstepping its bounds when it came to the Internet.

From Paul Levinson

Of the two manifest evils – government regulation of the Internet vs. corporate domination – government regulation is far worse and dangerous. It’s an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. Government insistence on any mode of behavior carries with it the threat of arrest and imprisonment and force of arms against those who are not in compliance. The worst that a corporation can do is take your money. Not good, but not as bad as the worst that the government can do.

Mike Masnick at Techdirt

Lots of people seem upset by this, but they should not be. This is the right decision. The FCC was clearly going beyond its mandate, as it has no mandate to regulate the internet in this manner. In fact, what amazed us throughout this whole discussion was that it was the same groups that insisted the FCC had no mandate over the broadcast flag, that suddenly insisted it did have a mandate over net neutrality. You can’t have it both ways (nor should you want to). Even if you believe net neutrality is important, allowing the FCC to overstep its defined boundaries is not the best way to deal with it. So for those of you upset by this ruling, look at it a little more closely, and be happy that the FCC has been held back from expanding its own mandate. Otherwise, the next time the FCC tried to do something like the broadcast flag or suddenly decided it could enforce “three strikes,” you’d have little argument.

Jeff Jarvis adds

I’ve amended my proposed Bill of Rights in Cyberspace thanks to a suggestion in the comments from Jeff Sonderman: All data are created equal. I made that all bits are created equal, which broadens it somewhat and is quite relevant today in the discussion of net neutrality that will explode because of an Appeals Court decision in Washington that told the FCC it did not have jurisdiction to tell Comcast to stop discriminating on bits.

Here’s the rub: On the one hand, I do not want government regulation of the internet. On the other hand, I do not want monopoly discrimination against bits on the internet. I see it as a principle that all bits are, indeed, created equal. But how is this enforced when internet service is provided by monopolies? Regulation. But I don’t want regulation. But… That is the vicious cycle of the net neutrality debate.

Now as much as I, like Jeff Jarvis, would really like to see “Internet Equality” as a shining beacon the reality of the situation now and the road going forward is entirely different. Jarvis likes to point to the fact that all bits should be treated equal when in actuality it is the farthest thing from the truth. Broadband providers would like to have us believe that Internet phone service is different from web access and content delivery and is different yet again from television delivered over the net for which they charge us three different prices.

Can we say double-dipping or maybe more appropriately triple-dipping?

Any digital data that travels over any kind of delivery system is all the same ones and zeros. There is no difference as far as the pipe is concerned folks no matter how hard they try to convince you otherwise.

That is the most basic principal of what everyone calls Net Neutrality – all the bits in the pipe are the same. There is no telephone bits, no television bits and no Internet bits.

The problem that the broadband providers have if this argument becomes the accepted norm is that they then can’t charge us the consumers three different fees and different rates based on some illusion of there being any differences. They also can’t cry wolf when they claim that video is killing their networks because those video bits are the same ones and zeros that make up the phone or television bits.

Up until now though Comcast and the other major broadband providers have been held in check by the mere threat of FCC intervention. They’ve had to play nice with the consumer and make it appear as if that they are benign gatekeepers but don’t kid yourself they are only bidding their time and today’s court decision will have far reaching consequences. Consequences that the consumer is going to be on the receiving end of.

Don’t get me wrong I am really hesitant of any government agencies getting involved with any type of regulation of the Internet. We only have to look to France and England to see where that road leads. However if anyone thinks that Comcast and other providers aren’t popping the champagne corks over this announcement .. well .. you’re a fool.

And trust me – we’ll be paying for all that champagne .. one way or another.

That sound of a cash register going cha-ching – it’s just Comcast celebrating FCC loss is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’m sorry but at what point are we just going to stick a fork in this one, call it quits and move onto one of the many other really good bittorrent tracking services out there. It was bad enough that some putz decided to buy the whole only to have the deal fall apart in flames as he got everything he own repossessed now we have courts trying to force judicial decisions upon people and companies that don’t even fall within their jurisdiction.

According to the team over at Torrent Freak the Stockholm District Court is now ordering that two of the site founder’s be banned from operating the site. The thing is here that neither Pirate Bay nor Gottfrid Svartholm or Fredrik Nelj are located in Sweden.

Ex-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde, who appears to be excluded from the decision, is notably annoyed, noting that neither the founders nor the site are located in Sweden.

“The Stockholm City Court is located in Stockholm. Stockholm is in Sweden. Swedish borders apply. Frederick and Godfrid live outside Sweden, even outside the EU. The Pirate Bay is outside the EU,” he told SR.

“How then can the Stockholm District Court, Sweden, get to decide that people abroad must not work on a site in another country?”

Talk about the long arm of the law needing to be reminded that it isn’t that long.

Pirate Bay founders told hands off the site is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the most common discussions that occurs over Web 2.0 services is their Terms of Service (TOS) agreements that we all have to agree to in order to use their products. Some of these TOS are more onerous that others but they are an inescapable part of our online world. This could all change if a recent decision by a Texas court.

The court case in question was the one filed against Blockbuster and over whether or not the company could change its Terms of Service at a moment’s notice. In Harris v. Blockbuster the judge said that Blockbuster’s online terms of service was “illusionary” and unenforceable because Blockbuster had reserved the right to change the terms of service at any time.

The opinion if followed by other courts could have significant implications for all websites, and social media services, that have terms of service agreements.

District Court in Texas Rejects Online Terms of Service as Illusory and Unenforceable

Court decision could shake up online user agreements is a post from: The Inquisitr

Granted this is a ruling by a judge in Ontario Canada so chances are the rest of the world will probably give out a big YAWN along with a who cares but it is interesting to see the judge’s reasoning for her opinion. It involves civil litigation suit due to a vehicle accident where the judge ordered one of the parties involved to hand over the contents of their private Facebook account.

The judge’s opinion (via Michael Geist)

a court can infer from the social networking purpose of Facebook, and the applications it offers to users such as the posting of photographs, that users intend to take advantage of Facebook’s applications to make personal information available to others.  From the general evidence about Facebook filed on this motion it is clear that Facebook is not used as a means by which account holders carry on monologues with themselves; it is a device by which users share with others information about who they are, what they like, what they do, and where they go, in varying degrees of detail.  Facebook profiles are not designed to function as diaries; they enable users to construct personal networks or communities of “friends” with whom they can share information about themselves, and on which “friends” can post information about the user.

[picture courtesy of Top Tech News]

Judge says a private Facebook account isn’t so private is a post from: The Inquisitr