International Legal Question: Can You Serve Someone via Twitter or Facebook

: Image by biverson via Flickr

The Swedish Wire reports that “The Pirate Bay-founders hunted on Twitter.” Legal officials from the Netherlands acting at the behest of Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland (BREIN), the Dutch entertainment industry cognate of the USA’s RIAA, is attempting to close down The Pirate Bay website in the Netherlands.

When the officials could not locate and hand deliver summons to the principals of The Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, they served the papers on Twitter and Facebook. The papers notify the three that they are to appear in court in Amsterdam on July 21st.

The BRIEN’s director told Johan Nylander of the Swedish Wire that “Internet works for enforcers as well as infringers. Now they know about the court case in The Netherland”. International judicial opinion is still out on whether Twitter and Facebook are going to end up being legal tools or not.

Peter Sunde was interviewed by Xeni Jardin of boingboing at the Open Video Conference via Skype on June 20th about the legal proceedings against them and The Pirate Bay and more. The Pirate Bay has been supporting open Internet and communication during the Iranian election crisis. Asked what a file sharing service had to do with democracy and freedom of speech, Sunde succinctly stated, “Everything,” and went to equate sharing with free speech. He also noted that sharing involves privacy rights.