My local television station, NBC New York, posted a story on its web site yesterday about another app for Facebook (News - Alert) which shows that judicial systems around the world are trying to stay current. Just days before a British Judge allowed a lawsuit service to be executed via the popular social networking site, Magistrate Paul Meyers of Cincinnati ordered a man charged with domestic violence to post an apology to his estranged wife on Facebook that must be on his wall for 30 days starting February 13.

As reported in the NBC posting and first covered by WLCT in Cincinnati, the order was a result of an individual by the name of Mark Byron violating a temporary protection order granted his soon-to-be-ex-wife Elizabeth by posting a derogatory comment on his Facebook account underneath a photo of himself and the couple’s young son.   He blocked Mrs. Byron from viewing it, but she managed to get a look anyway. 

The two media reports go into the details of how all this happened and the reactions of Mr. Byron, who says he likes to vent on Facebook. The timeline is that on January 25, Magistrate Meyers found that Mr. Byron had been a bad boy. He sentenced him to 60 days in jail, levied a $500 fine and said he could avoid the sentence by paying back child support and posting an apology on Facebook which, if you click the link, you can read.

Byron is quoted as being confused, “On one hand, the court wants to stop me from saying something on Facebook, and then it's telling me I have to (post) the prewritten apology, " he said.   They also quote Lawyer Jill Meyer of Frost Brown Todd Attorneys as saying, "What the court said about the notion of preventing somebody from speaking or compelling somebody to speak raises some constitutional First Amendment issues.” She equivocated a bit by adding, “We have right to free speech, but we can't just say anything. There are certain limitations.” This is a nice legal way of saying that individuals do not have a right to be able to yell “fire” in a crowded movie house.

Without getting into the free speech issue, which commenters on the WLTW item have thoroughly aired both pro and con, there is an interesting question as to whether the punishment fits the crime in this case, which is still ongoing. Along with the other penalties, whether a posting on Facebook is reasonable punishment and a way to restore someone’s reputation is certainly problematic. It is a nice novelty but it does not restore the status quo regarding Mrs. Byron’s reputation and hardly seems punitive if that is the goal of the court.

The reality is, once something goes up on the Net it tends to stay forever even if it is supposedly “taken down.” For instance, search engines may still contain links with short and defamatory descriptions even if clicking on them takes you to a page that is no longer live. 30 days on a Wall is a pittance. After all, the articles on this will not be deactivated so Mrs. Byron’s story will live on along with comments. 

There is no elegant solution to the issue of speech on the Internet, just as it has confounded jurists for centuries as to how far I am allowed the liberty to swing my arms if your face (pun intended) happens to be in the way.   In this case, Mr. Byron’s claim of privacy as to whether his wife should have been allowed to see his Facebook wall is a bit of a stretch on the privacy argument. It seems the best advice -- and the one likely to be given out by courts in the future -- is if you don’t want the world to know something, don’t be foolish and put it in a place where the world will have access.  

The old U.S. TV hit police drama Hill Street Blues used to open with the daily bullpen at the police station led by the late actor Michael Conrad as Sergeant Phil Esterhaus telling his officers as they went about their daily rounds, “Let’s be careful out there!” Never bad advice.