The bloggers in the audience undoubtedly know that whatever you say out there in cyberspace can come back to haunt you in the real world.  That goes double for your actions and activities posted on MySpace, Facebook, and all those other social networking websites that the people use religiously these days.  Not only are these websites becoming popular among people and businesses, they’re also a legally accepted way of delivering court documents.  That’s right, guys; now in addition to friends requests from people you don’t want to find you and the usual bevvy of advertisements, your Facebook page can now be used to subpoena you!

I’m not a big fan of using any of those social media things, and I’m always very careful about what I blog about.  The last thing I want to do is lose my real-world job because of something crazy I said or did (or someone said about me) online, and that kind of firing happens a little too often for comfort.  Given that you can’t even scratch yourself without the Internet hearing about it these days, it was only a matter of time before the lawyers invaded Facebook.

That said, I’m really surprised it’s taken the court system this long to accept Facebook and MySpace as a valid way of serving notice to offenders.  Emails have been perfectly valid legal documents for years now.   MySpace pages are used as court evidence in murder cases.  Virtual process serving is going to be the next big leap forward in criminal justice. If you’re going to skip out on your loan, then you’d best set your profiles to private or the law is going to catch up with you!

Tags: MySpace, Facebook, Internet, Social Media, Facebook subpoena, legal documents served online, virtual address, court, laws, virtual process serving, Australia, Carmel Rita Corbo, Gordon Poyser, Mark McCormack

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I love the […]

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