Twitter European boss Tony Wang warns UK tweeters
25 May 2011 Last updated at 15:19 GMT
Tony Wang has been appointed European Twitter boss
Twitter's new European boss has suggested that users who broke a legal embargo to reveal Ryan Giggs' name could face the UK courts.
Tony Wang said people who did "bad things" would have to defend themselves.
He warned that the site would hand over user information to the authorities where they were "legally required".
Lawyers for the footballer have filed court papers against Twitter and a number of its members.
Responding to a question from BBC News at the e-G8 forum in Paris, Mr Wang said: "Platforms have a responsibility, not to defend that user but to protect that user's right to defend him or herself".
He declined to comment on the case directly but explained that Twitter would comply with local laws to turn over user details.
He stressed that the site would also notify those individuals of any such request.
Little sympathy
Mr Wang made it clear that if the matter came to court, those people would be on their own.
He said Twitter would, "let them exercise their own legal rights under their own jurisdiction, whether that is a motion to quash the order or to oppose it or do a number of other things to defend themselves."
The subject of legal jurisdictions and the internet has been hotly debated at the first e-G8 summit.
Technology industry leaders including Google's Eric Schmidt and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg were among the speakers at the event.
While many attendees felt that there was a need for further discussion, among delegates from the United States, there was little sympathy for the British legal position.
"I do view it to being similar to the Chinese situation where they also cover up misdeeds of high ranking people," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told the BBC.
He said that, although the internet was a global phenomenon, it was unlikely to pander to those countries with stricter rules.
"The US is going to be absolutely inflexible on this point. It is in the constitution," he said, referring to freedom of speech provisions.
"I think that puts intergovernmental communication and co-operation on this issue into a different light, which is, there's not a whole lot to co-operate on."
Credit: BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
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