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Digital Disobedience by Juries Leads to Mistrials, New Jury Rules Against Jurors Using Smartphones to Google and Tweet

We’re all familiar with the movies and stories about jurors who skirt or even violate rules in the name of “real justice” (one of our favorites is the little-known movie Suspect, with Liam Neeson, Dennis Quaid, John Mahoney (best known as Frasier’s dad), and Cher). But it’s become a serious problem as the confluence of Google, social media, and smartphones in the pocket of every juror has led to a phenomenon known as the “Googling juror”, or “digital disobedience”. Put simply, jurors are taking matters into their own hands, doing extra-curricular (and extra-legal) research, and also sharing information on social media, which is throwing trials, and even causing mistrials.

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Super-Injunctions, Twitter, and Celebrities Explained

You may have noticed that the Internet is all a-Twitter (pun intended) over super-injunctions (a/k/a superinjunctions), but despite that, it may well be that you have no idea just what a super injuntion is, nor why you should care. If you are from the U.S. you’re even less likely to know, and so if you are asking yourself “What is a super-injunction?”, well, we’ll explain.

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Twitter to Start Charging Businesses for Premium Tweeting

It’s official: Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, has announced that Twitter is gearing up to start charging businesses for business use of Twitter through a premium Twitter service.

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Couples’ Twitter Tweets Lead to Burglery?

Isreal Hyman and his wife were no doubt looking forward to their vacation a few weeks ago. Hyman, the proprietor of IzzyVideo.com in Mesa, Arizona, shared his plans with his 2,000+ followers on Twitter. So when he became the victim of a home burglery (which differs from robbery in that the victim is not present), he had to wonder if the burgler had seen his Tweets.

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Phil Spector Twittering from Prison?

It would seem that Phil Spector is Twittering from prison. While it seems unlikely, even unbelievable – and speculation about whether it’s really Phil Spector Twittering from jail, or an imposter, abounds – in reading the actual Twitter messages, if it’s not Phil Spector (whose full name is actually Harvey Phillip Spector, or “Harvey P. Spector”), then it’s a darned good facsimile Tweeting in Phil Spector’s name.