Judge Says No Twittering From The Courtroom
from the keep-it-quiet dept
There have been many debates over whether or not it's appropriate to blog or Twitter from the courtroom -- in fact, just last week I attended a short conference at the US courthouse in San Francisco about how the court system is dealing with such things. While you might understand why it's barred for jury members or participants in the trial to use such things, it does seem a bit excessive for a judge to bar reporters from Twittering as well, but that's exactly what's happened. The judge ruled that it was a form of a "broadcast," which is prohibited (why broadcasts are prohibited is a separate topic for a separate day, though it doesn't really make any sense).Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: courtroom, journalism, twitter
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Luckily this is not the case everywhere
As reported by a well-known blogger-lawyer, several journalists cover prominent trials. See http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/09/25/Peut-on-twitter-un-proc%C3%A8s
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Gadgets
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Re: Gadgets
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The last absolute dictatorship...
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2 seperate issues
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Re: Re: Gadgets
I AM THE LAW!
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Re: 2 seperate issues
I agree.
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What the law says...
California:
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/reference/documents/cameras.pdf
San Francisco:
http://www.sfsuperiorcourt.org/index.aspx?page=21
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Re: 2 seperate issues
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Re: 2 seperate issues
On the broadcasting from inside the courtroom front, it's just not as simple as broadcasting is allowed or isn't. Certain areas and events in court need to be blacked out in order to protect jurors, witnesses, confidential or embarrassing information. With a court operated TV feed, they can manage that relatively easily and reliably. But if everyone has a laptop or smartphone, there is NOTHING to prevent someone from broadcasting names, information, even juror descriptions. Hell, why not pictures, video and audio? Clearly this is a problem for any court proceeding open to the public, even before technology was a factor. But in-person activities can be managed to a degree and are not realtime and don't carry the recording risk. But now, the means to record and broadcast realtime are nearly ubiquitous and only traceable after the fact...once the damaging bell is rung. Most devices which can Twitter can also capture rich media.
There has to be a balance between the rights of those attending court and those involved in the case - plaintiff, defendant, jurors, witnesses.
I know in my county courthouse, no cell/smart phones or PDAs are allowed at all, except for court officers.
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Re: The last absolute dictatorship...
If Twitter is broadcast, then posting anything to the internet is a broadcast. If a person in the gallery watching the trial decided to check TechDirt during a lull in the action and posted a comment about one of the articles here, would that be a broadcast also?
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On the other hand, why they forbid communication to the outside or whatever, I have no idea. Maybe they want to secure the movie rights, and make sure there are no leaks?
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A little too early
It's important to protect against tainting process. When news feeds are allowed within the courtroom, it's because well established controls have been put in place. When a new medium is introduced, it's obviously going to take time to put proper procedures in place.
The judge didn't say "No Twittering in the Courtroom - EVER!" He said it needs to be treated like any other broadcast medium - needing proper procedures and controls in place.
The ruling as described here seems fair and balanced and also open-ended enough to allow for courtroom tweeting to be evaluated as a possible channel. It's just a little too early to expect a court to suddenly open up to in-court tweeting without careful consideration of the impact. Give it time.
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Re: A little too early
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> kind of communication from within the court
> while it's in session.
Of course that standard would make even sending an e-mail to your spouse a "broadcast", which negates even the basic common-sense definition of the word.
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> kind of communication from within the court
> while it's in session
Also, unless they basically confiscate all mobile devices from everyone as they enter the courtroom and hold anyone in contempt who is found using them for any reason ("broadcast" or otherwise), there's no way to enforce a Twitter ban among the non-participants in the gallery.
If I'm there just watching the trial and I Twitter something during the proceedings, at the end of the day, I'm walking away from the court and probably never coming back. By the time the judge becomes aware of my tweet, I'm long gone. He really has no remedy to punish such people like he would with the jurors or the litigants in the case, especially considering many people Twitter under anonymous screen names anyway.
What's the judge going to do? Serve subpoenas on an out-of-state corporation, demanding IP address data, then serve more subpoenas on ISPs (also likely out-of-state) to get subscriber info, then swear out an arrest warrant and spend police resources tracking down that person and having them arrested and charged with contempt... all for a Twitter post?
Any judge that takes that kind of heavy-handed, costly, and abusive approach to enforcing something which isn't even a violation of the law, but rather merely a violation of the judge's personal preferences, would likely find him/herself on the wrong end of an ethics investigation in short order.
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