Me, Twitter and the BBC

Earlier this afternoon I read this story on Guido Fawkes' blog about my former young Tory sparring partner, Donal Blaney, being given permission to serve an injunction via Twitter.

My first thought, apart from that 140 characters makes for a short injunction (a link is being tweeted), was that it doesn't much help if the offender tweeter fails to comply with the injunction - enforcement is still a bit of an issue, to say the least. Short of a disclosure order against Twitter, such legal action appears to be a little fruitless - although failure to comply would constitute contempt of court, which carries sanctions far greater than any damages likely to be awarded to Donal - if the perpetrator is ever uncovered.

I made a short comment to this effect on Guido's blog (number 6) and sent a short tweet from Bootlaw and thought nothing more of it.

Then, a few minutes later I saw a tweet from BBC tech correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones, asking Donal to send him the injunction tweet.

So, I sent Rory a direct message offering commentary on the matter, and quickly checked the Civil Procedure Rules on service of documents. Moments later I had a response from Rory, asking me to call him on his mobile. We spoke twice (he called back to confirm the details) and he asked if I was aware of any other strange examples of service of legal documents - I said I thought there was a case involving Facebook.

Literally, half an hour later, this appeared on BBC news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8285954.stm - currently the 4th most popular story on the site!

Amazing how you can get free publicity, just using Twitter, eh Donal?

Auntie nicked my blog

OK - not my whole blog, but I think they nicked my idea about Rory Bremner committing a breach of the Fraud Act in his spoof call to Margaret Becket.

In a bid to drum up interest in my latest post, yesterday I commented on Nick Robinson's blog, which mentioned the issue. I said: "I am concerned that if you make money out by tricking people into doing something or revealing information which they would not have otherwise done, you are committing fraud, under the Fraud Act 2006, or previously, the Theft Act. Has anyone looked into this?"

So imagine my surprise when I saw an article on the BBC News Magazine section today, entitled: "Is it legal to impersonate a minister?". The article concludes that it isn't a crime and quotes various criminal solicitors. I wonder if they have given the subject much thought. Clearly a crime could be committed by phoning up one government minister, pretending to be another. What if there were a breach of the Official Secrets Act? What if price sensitive market information were revealed and then used?

Anyway, I commented on the article and asked if they nicked my idea, but of course, no answer from Auntie.