Tech Bankruptcy
January 22, 2010
You've been served
BBC News reported a couple of months ago about a British court allowing service of a court order using Twitter. Twitter is, for those who do not yet know, an on-line network allowing users to post short messages that are then broadcast to a list of subscribers. In the particular case, a political blogger named Donal Blarney sought an order enjoining another user of the Twitter service. Because the target of the court injunction had not yet actually been identified, the court allowed the injunction to be served via a posting on Twitter. The posting gave notice of the court order and, because twitter postings are very limited in length, contained a link to the order itself.
Apparently, according to a story in The Register, the tactic succeeded. The malefactor did in fact receive the notice of the order and agreed to comply with the order.
Would similar tactics work in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court? Perhaps in limited circumstances. Fed. R. Civ. P. 5(b)(2)(D) and Fed. R. Bankr. P. 7005 allow service by "electronic means" when the recipient has previously consented in writing. Service is effective on transmission. This rule was designed to allow service by e-mail through the ECF system, but there really is no reason why other means could not be used as well. The catch is, of course, getting that advance written consent.
Labels: service of process, subpoena, twitter
¶ 4:10 PM 0 comments
January 20, 2010
A little bit off-topic post about Kindles
I came across the following article yesterday: E-BOOK TRANSACTIONS:
AMAZON “KINDLES” THE COPY OWNERSHIP DEBATE, 12 YALE J.L. & TECH. 147 (2009). It struck a chord, mostly because it cites fairly extensively to an article I wrote back in 2005 on the law surrounding transactions in electronic information. (A Framework for Understanding Electronic Information Transactions, 15 Albany Law Journal of Science & Technology 277 (2005)) I had been under the distinct impression that no one had really read the article, so I was pleased to see that I was, once again, wrong.
This article, written by Yale law school student Michael Seringhaus, posits that Amazon's sale of e-books for use on the Kindle should be classified as a sale of a book rather than a license of information. It also suggests potential ways of applying technological solutions, rather than legal solutions, to enforce single-copy ownership of an e-book.
I, in the meanwhile, have e-mailed Mr. Seringhaus' article off to my Kindle, where I will be able to read it at my leisure along with other law review articles, Westlaw advance sheets, and other miscellaneous documents that I do not have time to read at my desk. As it turns out, the Kindle is well suited for this purpose because you can e-mail a pdf or Word document (as well as many other types of documents) to an e-mail address Amazon provides you, and the document is automatically transferred wirelessly to the Kindle device.
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