SAN FRANCISCO, May 8 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc filed a motion
in a New York criminal court on Tuesday seeking to quash a
subpoena for Tweets and account records associated with Malcolm
Harris, a Twitter user who was arrested last fall on the
Brooklyn Bridge during an Occupy protest.
Prosecutors in Manhattan have sought to build a case around
Harris' Tweets by arguing that they show Harris was "well aware
of the police instructions, and acted with the intent of
obstructing traffic on the bridge," according to court filings.
Harris lost a bid to quash the subpoena in April, after a
judge ruled that Twitter holds a license to its users' Tweets.
But the company stepped in on Harris' behalf on Tuesday to
argue that the license did not apply to Harris because Twitter's
terms of service allow users to retain ownership of the content
they publish.
Twitter's motion offered some insight into the six-year-old
company's legal posture at a time when it is becoming
increasingly entangled in criminal prosecutions involving users.
In the past year, protesters around the world have relied on the
service to organize and disseminate information during
demonstrations.
"Yesterday we filed a motion in NYC to defend a user's
voice," Twitter's legal counsel, Benjamin Lee, said in a Tweet
on Tuesday. He added: "#corevalues."
The Manhattan district attorney's office served a subpoena
for Tweets by Harris that are no longer available because Harris
deleted them. The Tweets cover three months in 2011.
In March, a judge ordered Twitter to hand over information
7about an account that police said was indirectly tied to the
Occupy Boston movement.
The case is People v. Harris, Criminal Court of the City of
New York, No. 2011NY080152.
For the prosecution: Assistant District Attorney Lee
Langston
For Harris: Martin Stolar of the National Lawyers Guild
(Reporting By Gerry Shih and Joseph Ax)
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