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Plaintiff's Exhibit 1: Your Facebook Wall

By Eric Lipman

Bloggers, tech nerds and law geeks have been buzzing about a decision coming out of the Central District of California a few weeks ago, addressing the question of whether information maintained by social networking sites like Facebook can be subpoenaed for use in civil litigation (as opposed to merely used unofficially to gain a tactical advantage). The case is Crispin v. Audigier, and the opinion can be found here. Venkat at Spam Notes has a pretty good breakdown of the court's ruling (which links to an expanded summary at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog), including the important distinction between information which is "publicly available," and that which isn't. Of course, how much and what sorts of information Facebook makes "publicly available," as we've been finding out, is increasingly a moving target. As such, FutureLawyer's mom's advice is sounding better and better: Follow my mom's advice, and don't say anything on Facebook that you wouldn't mind being published on the front page of the local newspaper. At least, if you still HAVE a local newspaper.

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on June 09, 2010 (boomark / email).