What’s socially acceptable on Social networks -Facebook court orders ?

When I was younger my parents impressed upon me the importance of saying please and thank you ,not dipping my bread in my soup in public ,calling grown up’s by their sir name until I was told other wise and the vital importance of not always vocalizing my internal thoughts.”Miss Barry –Murphy, Miss Barry-Murphy why is your belly so big, are you having a baby   ?” “No Claire, go back to your colouring of the baby Jesus”.

learning these simple rules helps oil the wheels that make social discourse run that bit more smoothly. With the emergence of social networks and digital reality I wonder how we will go out about explaining social (network )etiquette to our children. Or will there be a difference ,as the lines between our digital and real lives merge further. In a world where there will be double meanings to phrases like “Don’t poke them” and “have you been playing Tag “and friending and facebooking are considered real verbs.

A recent story about a lawyers attempts to provide forclosue notice to  Australian couple trying to avid court appearances shows just how blurred the lines between our Facebook lives and our real lives are fast becoming.

Lawyers in a Canberra law firm Meyer Vandenberg persuaded a judge in the Australian Capital Territory's Supreme Court to allow them to serve legal documents over the internet via Facebook. This was after a series of failed attempts to serve the papers in person to the couple. The couple had continually ignored emails from the law firm regarding the matter and had failed to attend a court appearance on Oct 3. For all intensive purposes the couple had vanished.

Mr McCormack was quoted as saying there was no other way to find the two.
"They weren't available at their residence. They no longer worked at the place given in some documents as the last place of their employment,"
he said.
After it became increasingly apparent that couple did not want to be found, Lawyer, Mark McCormack came up with a modern approach to tackle the situation. Which those in the firm nicknamed the “Facebook Plan”

“It's somewhat novel, however we do see it as a valid method of bringing the matter to the attention of the defendant," McCormack said.

Carmel Rita Corbo and Gordon Poyser had failed to keep up repayments on a $150,000 (£44,000) loan they had borrowed from MKM Capital, a mortgage provider.

Mc Cormack looked to the social networking giant for inspiration for his new plan. As a facebooker himself he said...

"It's one of those occasions where you feel most at home with what you know and I myself have a Facebook account."

The former home of Carmel Rita Corbo and Gordon Poyser

It appears to be the first time that Facebook has been used by lawyer in this way according to Facebook spokes person  Barry Schnitt. He praised the ruling saying...

"We're pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication,"

In their accounts given to the courts ,to persuade them that Facebook was a valid means of communication they noted that the , Facebook profiles showed the defendants' dates of birth, email addresses and friend lists and the co-defendants were friends with one another.

"This information was enough to satisfy the court that Facebook was a sufficient method of communicating with the defendants.”

In a legal first the court decided Facebook was a legally viable way to communicate foreclosure notices. However, in granting permission to use the social networking site, the judge stipulated that the papers be sent via a private email so that other people visiting the page could not read their contents.

This represents a massive shift in the validity of social networking as a means of communication, with court documents being communicated via this method. This may see a shift in the way people create and use sites like Facebook as people who certainly never envisioned Facebook being used in this way.

Sydney University of Technology law professor Michael Fraser said the court intrusion into a social Web site was inevitable he also commented that ..

"It does change the rules of the game because people thought of these as social sites; now they can be used to serve official court documents and it may change the way people establish a presence on the social networks and the way they use them,"

So be warned the rules of engagement are changing the repo man wants to "poke" you and  the bill collector is writing on your wall.