By It seems that in the wake of a decision to make itself more profitable, Twitter found themselves in a new environment. Twitter is now going to court.
After the entire Wikileaks story escalated, Julian Assange’s trial was held in open session with most of the world media being represented in the courtroom.
Twitter mobile
As we know, there are strict rules on what may or may not be carried into the courtroom and on what the proper conduct during a judge’s hearing should be.
Some of those rules may have been bent during the Wikileaks trial and decision. Since the hearing hadn’t been completely over yet the news of Julian Assange having been granted bail was already online Twitter had to be involved.
That’s not the most interesting part of this whole story is what the justice system came to decide at a later hearing on the situation of tweeting while in court.
Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales held a meeting shortly after the Wikileaks founder was granted bail and eventually we saw this new rule. The new rule clearly states that Twitter usage is allowed while in court.
The decision was helped along by the fact that most such messages were sent from mobile devices that were not obtrusive to the hearing. So as long as your phone has silent written somewhere on the display you can write the entire case on Twitter if you please.
The same rule applies for email usage, social media statuses and whatever else you may be using in terms of mobile Internet.
The previous rules of sound and video recordings in court still stands. For now these remain banned and probably will for a long time.
There’s one more thing however, Twitter messages have been sent out from courtrooms before. It was only the Wikileaks story that had the justice makers decide on the matter.
The scale of the Wikileaks trial’s exposure on the Internet created fear of a contentious status as Twitter is, at the end of the day a form of public broadcasting.
So while it has been going on for a while, it’s now finally legal to use Twitter in court.
