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p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- A federal judge in Georgia has banned live tweets from a criminal trial.

A reporter for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer wanted to Twitter updates from the corruption trial of local attorney Mark Shelnutt “directly from the courtroom to his newspaper’s ‘Twitter’ website, says the Volokh Conspiracy.

But, “Defendant objects to this request,” says a court document.

Land wrote

The Court finds that the term “broadcasting” in Rule 53 includes sending electronic messages from a courtroom that contemporaneously describe the trial proceedings and are instantaneously available for public viewing. Although “broadcasting” is typically associated with the dissemination of information via television or radio, its plain meaning is broader than that. The definition of “broadcast” includes “casting or scattering in all directions” and “the act of making widely known.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged) 280 (1993). It cannot be reasonably disputed that “twittering,” as previously described, would result in casting to the general public and thus making widely known the trial proceedings. Moreover, it appears clear that the drafters of Rule 53 intended to extend the Rule’s reach beyond the transmission of trial proceedings via television and radio.

Explains the court document

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that invites its users to answer the question: “What are you doing?” Twitter’s users can send and read electronic messages known as “tweets.” A tweet is a short text post (up to 140 characters) delivered through Internet or phone-based text systems to the author’s subscribers. Users can send and receive tweets in several ways, including via the Twitter website.

Now you know.

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Volokh Conspiracy – Federal Rules Interpreted as Barring Twitter Coverage of Trial from Inside Courtroom, November 0, 2009

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