Man is jailed for refusing to turn over Facebook and Twitter passwords in business bankruptcy case
Jeremy Alcede personally maintained the Facebook and Twitter accounts for his former Texas gun store and shooting range.
He thought of them as his own, and didn’t hesitate to inject his political views as he publicized Tactical Firearms in Katy.
But a federal bankruptcy judge disagreed, and ordered Alcede to turn over the passwords to the new operator of the gun store, finding the social media accounts to be business assets even though Alcede has removed the Tactical Firearms moniker and substituted his own, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Alcede refused and was jailed for contempt. He has been been held since April 9 in solitary confinement.
“He holds the key to his jail cell,” said Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jeff Bohm during a Friday hearing in the Houston case, noting that Alcede will be released when he tells U.S. Marshals that he will turn over the passwords. “I don’t think I’m doing my job as a judge if I don’t enforce my own orders.”
Attorney Leif Olson represents Alcede and says the ruling that the accounts are business assets is mistaken, an earlier Houston Chronicle article reports. Olson also says his client was willing to go to jail to prevent the government from silencing the views that Alcede has been presenting to some 11,000 followers via the Internet.
“If Steve Jobs posted on Twitter or would have put on Facebook his political observations, his statements about the state of the world and occasional mentions about things going on at Apple, that would be personal, not corporate,” said Olson.
The unusual case is one of the first in which a bankruptcy court has classified social media accounts as property of a business, the Chronicle says.
“There are no clear rules,” explained Locke Lord partner Jason Mueller, who has an intellectual property practice in Dallas. “There are no laws.”
