TechLaw

Australian Court Approves Service Via Facebook

Over in Australia, a trial judge has approved service of process in a loan foreclosure case to be made by posting the suit papers to the defendant's Facebook account.

"It's somewhat novel, however we do see it as a valid method of bringing the matter to the attention of the defendant," the plaintiff's attorney is quoted as saying in the Telegraph.co.uk article.

Courts in the United States (the Ninth Circuit's 2002 decision in Rio Properties Inc. v. Rio International Interlink, for example) have already approved service of court papers via e-mail on several occasions. Among many Internet users, Facebook is preferred over e-mail as a means of communication. And there is often little doubt as to the owner of a Facebook profile, which in many cases are assiduously cultivated and personalized; in this case, for example, the defendant's Facebook profile contained date of birth info, e-mail addresses and a list of acquaintances.

TRUSTe: Less Than Half of Us Feel in Control of Personal Information

The TRUSTe/Ponemon Institute's annual "Most Trusted Companies for Privacy" report, an analysis of consumer perceptions about privacy, is out again today. You can read a summary of the results here. Seventy-two percent of respondents told researchers that privacy was important to them, but less than half of the respondents (45 percent) believe they have control over how their personal information is used or shared.

Virginia Attorney General Takes Spam Case to High Court

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell filed a petition for certiorari today seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of a state-court ruling that Virginia's unsolicited bulk e-mail law violates First Amendment protections for anonymous speech. Nearly all state anti-spam laws regulate commercial speech; Virginia's law, on the other hand, regulates all bulk unsolicited e-mail. The attorney general's press release announcing the filing spends a lot of time making the point that Jeremy Jaynes is a horrible individual but not much about why the lower court erred.

The petition for certiorari doesn't defend the statute either. Instead, the petition argues that the state supreme court misapplied the U.S. Supreme Court's substantial overbreadth doctrine, improperly permitting Jaynes to assert the free speech rights of persons engaged in protected political speech, then invalidating the state law because it might have a conceivable impact on the exercise of those rights.

A like to the petition should be working here later today.