Facebook used to serve legal documents
Facebook has been used for the first time to serve legal documents to defendants who could not be be located in the real world but who could be located on the web.
A Canberra, Australia, court ordered that a judgment be served to defendants via their Facebook page when they failed to show up for court and an address for them could not be located.
“Both myself and my colleague Jason Oliver have Facebook accounts, so we thought we could access that and see if we could find them,” said attorney Mark McCormack.
The two co-defendants were listed as being friends in their Facebook profiles and their birth dates matched those of the defendants being sought, satisfying the court that these were the men.
I’ve said this to many people in private conversation, and it’s worth repeating here: if you want to be anonymous on the Internet, stay off the Internet entirely.
I started blogging back in 2004 -- in May, if the Wayback Machine is to be believed. Not that I remember the exact day. To be honest, I didn't take it that seriously then; it was a fun distraction, but nothing more.
That all changed, I think, once the Danish cartoons were published, and the assault on the right to freedom of expression became very visible. With the recent issues in Canada concerning the "human rights" commissions, the gravity of the matter has only increased, and my interest in blogging has increased right along with it.
I used to blog at a domain called Time Immortal, but it seemed to be the right time for a change -- there's been a lot of that in my life of late. Hence this blog: a fresh start, and proof positive that I won't shut up even if I get shut down once in a while.
