Saturday, August 27, 2011

You Are Hereby Requested To Log In To Facebook

Just recently a UK lawyer was allowed by the British courts to use Facebook as a means of contacting a debtor for court. This had been previously done in Austria, and recently allowed in Britain as well. This method however is still used as a last ditch effort, and other conventional means are still preferred before resorting to using social networking sites. It is a well known fact that Facebook is the largest online community side in the world, and almost everyone has an account and checks the same regularly. A lot of times, users check their Facebook account even more regularly than email. With snail mail becoming more and more obsolete, it is refreshing to see certain courts embrace this mode of serving summons. If it works, then there should be no reason not to use this mode of serving court orders. There are of course risks, such as the risk of sending it to the wrong person, or that person not being the true owner of the account, etc. But there are also advantages of convenience, as well as expediency in using social networks. In the near future these risks will only be less and less present, and then perhaps we can finally do away with the unreliable conventional methods. We can only hope that one day the Philippines will accept this mode as well.

No comments: