Social networking sites consider UK court ruling

Social networking sites based abroad are tonight considering whether to comply with a British court ruling seeking to ban their members from revealing the identities of parties involved in sensitive legal proceedings in London.

An injunction, the first to mention social networking sites specifically, was served in the case of a mother wanting to withdraw life support to her brain damaged daughter, being heard in the secretive Court of Protection. It bans the identification of more than 60 people involved in the proceedings and comes at the end of a week which has seen injunctions broken on Twitter.

However, the two sites named: Facebook and Twitter are American companies and, as such, are not necessarily bound by injunctions served in English courts. And, when asked yesterday if Facebook would remove any content which broke the injunction, a spokesman said the company’s lawyers were “reviewing” the situation.

A Twitter spokesman refused to comment on whether the site would remove any offending tweets but its terms explain that users must comply with “all applicable local, state, national, and international laws, rules and regulations”.

The document goes on to state, however, that Twitter users are ultimately responsible for the content they post and that the company takes “no responsibility” for content posted by users.

International media lawyer Mark Stephens explained that injunctions taken out in English courts do not automatically bind foreign companies. “One would need to go to America to ask a US court to aid the British courts, which they would only be able to do if the order was found not to breach the First Amendment.

“That is a long and convoluted process. Much more likely would be to bring proceedings against John Doe – persons unkonwn – and the site which published the material, forcing them to release the identity of whoever broke the injunction so that proceedings could then be brought against them,” he said.

Ultimately, if ordered to comply by their own courts, social networking sites based abroad would have little choice but to remove any content which broke an English injunction. However, many social networking – as well as other internet sites – have a history of fighting against attempts to force them to release their users’ details or remove their content.