(Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid)
The legal battle between Twitter and the Manhattan Criminal Court is heating up. Just a few weeks ago, we reported that Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. struck down Twitter’s protest of a subpoena requiring it to hand over tweets by Malcolm Harris, an Occupy Wall Street protestor who was arrested for disorderly conduct during the Brooklyn Bridge protests.
Today, Twitter counsel Ben Lee announced–via Twitter, natch–that the company will be appealing Judge Sicarrino’s decision, stating that, “It doesn’t strike the right balance between the rights of users and the interests of law enforcement.”
The decision is merely the latest chapter in the long saga of Twitter vs. the New York courts. The company originally refused to cooperate with the subpoena in May, due to the fact that Twitter’s terms of service clearly state that all users own their tweets. Judge Sciarrino scoffed at that reasoning, ruling that:
The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts. What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you.
The District Attorney’s office declined to comment.