Who owns your FaceBook post?

Who really has control of your Facebook site?

Great question, but is it really settled yet?  February 15, 2011 the California Supreme Court blocked a lower court judge from being required to turn over Facebook postings of a juror.   Where the juror foreperson blogged, posted and made phone calls during his stint as a juror on a criminal case made no attempt to keep his communications held private, he posted on a social network site.  You might guess where he posted the comments.

Arturo Ramirez posted on Facebook, “Back to jury duty can it get any more BORING than going over piles and piles of metro pcs phone records . . . uuuuughhhh.”  So who has control over that post? The government says they do and they want it and Ramirez claims he is in control of that post.

The government issued subpoenas to Facebook for the postings of Ramirez and Facebook refused.  However, the court issued an order stating that Ramirez had until Feb 14, to authorize the release of the post on Facebook.

Can the court order a person to release private communications?

Ramirez claims violation of the Fourth Amendment (search and seizure) and claims to find protection in The Fifth Amendment for due process (the right not to self incriminate)

Right now it stands that Facebook does not have to hand over the posts and Ramirez has the power of them.  At least for now.  Social networking cases are in their infancy!

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