Social media being used in Court.

The issue of regulating Internet space has always been a difficult area to govern. What people say and what people do on the Internet is increasingly become more and more of a ‘hot topic’. But in recent times, there has been an increasing number of cases where video footage and social media profile information have been used in a court of law to help with providing evidence.

According to Dishon & Block Family Law Attorneys, social media has been a key part of nearly 700 cases since 2010. Information gathered from social media is increasingly being used in court. Information on a persons state of mind, evidence of communications through message logs, evidence of time and place, and even evidence of action. An example is with divorce proceedings that have involved the use of photos, message logs, or even video evidence to help settle cases. an example that Dishon & Block Family Law Attorneys highlighted was a case involving a woman named Ms. McGurk who wished to sue her former ex husband for alimony for support, from an accident that she claimed to have disabled her during the marriage. However, evidence pulled from Facebook and MySpace showed that four years after the accident she was an avid belly dancer. The judge accepted this as proof and therefore she was denied all support claims made against her ex husband.

Even YouTube has been used to find and gather information on wanted law offenders who were filmed on cameras of bystanders or captured on security footage. Crime stoppers Victoria is a crime fighting charity that works with the Victorian Police. They have their own YouTube channel to which they use to try and get more feedback on information from the public, in relation to an videos they post up of crimes caught on camera.

http://www.youtube.com/user/CrimeStoppersVicAU


Other cases that sparked YouTube controversy and made headlines over video footage uploaded, range from animal abuse, to bullying, to hoons, to out-right bloody gang fights. All these videos were as if a plea from the public uploaders to help find these people and for them to be brought to justice; and thankfully most of them were. For instance, the incident involving the "puppy thrower"; When video footage of a girl was uploaded onto You Tube of her throwing defenceless newly born puppies into a river. Who was later identified, through the use of social media, as Katja Puschnik was taken to court, however, in this case the offender was not charge because of her age.