Ethics | Socially Aware Blog

Should We All Be Getting the Twitter “Jitters”? Be Careful What You Say Online (Particularly in the United Kingdom)

By Alistair Maughan and Susan McLean on May 30th, 2012 Posted in Ethics, Litigation

History is littered with examples of the law being slow to catch up with the use of technology. Social media is no exception. As our Socially Aware blog attests, countries around the world are having to think fast to apply legal norms to rapidly evolving communications technologies and practices. Law enforcement authorities in the United… Continue Reading

A Dirty Job: TheDirty.com Cases Show the Limits of CDA Section 230

By Cecilia Ziniti on April 26th, 2012 Posted in Ethics, Litigation, Privacy

We’ve reported before on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), the 1996 statute that states, “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Courts have interpreted Section 230 to immunize social media and other websites… Continue Reading

You’re Out of Order: Jurors, Social Media and Legal Ethics

By Daniel P. Westman and Jeremy Ben Merkelson on October 1st, 2011 Posted in Ethics

The Internet and, in particular, social media have changed the landscape of federal and state jury instructions, which now prohibit jurors from conducting independent research on the Internet, from sending emails, texts, Facebook postings, tweets or other electronic communications conveying developments in a trial or in deliberations, and from using mobile cameras to record courtroom… Continue Reading