Super Injunctions

DonDaddyD

Ryan Giggs

So the news is out, and, according to Ms DDD, the whole drama around enforcing Super Injunctions in the digital age (where we can read news reports from around the World that are not bound by restrictions of our legal systems) is likely to make legal history or at the very least the law or the way it is enforced will be rewritten.

Still it's all very interesting. Your thoughts?

Me?

Well firstly I think reins will be put in place on social networking websites. It's not the first time social networking sites have been used as a media tool for reaching the public and they currently appear to be a legal grey area. It will be very interesting to see if Twitter comply to the court order to provide the account details of the person who leaked the injunction details.

Worst case scenario we go the route of China, which has strict rules as to what is and isn't available on its Internet (Google search browser).

In all of this I can't help feel that if Giggs' lawyers kept quiet we may have overlooked it. The implied outrage on Giggs' part has now overshadowed other injunctions like Gordon Ramsey's and sexual harassment.

jamesco

DonDaddyD wrote:

In all of this I can't help feel that if Giggs' lawyers kept quiet we may have overlooked it. The implied outrage on Giggs' part has now overshadowed other injunctions like Gordon Ramsey's and sexual harassment.

Yup. "Streisand Effect".

roger_merriman

social media has little to fear to be honest. in this case the law is a ass. and frankly toothless.

Like water information will find a way.

DonDaddyD

roger merriman wrote:

social media has little to fear to be honest. in this case the law is a ass. and frankly toothless.

Like water information will find a way.

There is nothing to stop a Law to be passed that states that any Social Networking websites that wish to be made available within England must agree to X law*

X law being that they are subject to English laws regarding the media, one of which could be that should they request information on users of that website then the Company would have to comply.

If they don't then they could prevent access to their website within England. There are some Countries with Internet 'kill switches' for example.

SimonAH

Nope.

That's the biggest change to the world status - you cannot now shut people up. Even in China.

If twitter / facebook / Mumsnet / BikeRadar etc etc are all gagged and bound I simply email a friend in the States or Portugal or France or Germany or in fact a colleague in any country where my company has a global presence and say "Hi Dick / Angel / Jean / Kurt, please can you look this up and send me a screenshot?"

The cat is then out of the bag and clawing the curtains.

And we can all do this.

The law is out of date and unenforceable.

t4tomo

I find the whole concept of the super injunction pretty distasteful and odd from a legal perpective.

We have liable laws to prevent spread of mistruths, why should people be banned from telling the truth?

Also what happens if someone breaches a Super injunction? as what is the remedy / punishment?

The disclosure can't be taken back, tehy haven't said anything untrue, the concept of sending someone to jail for telling the truth doesn't sit well with me and how could compensation be due? If you didn't want your wife to find out Bryan Figgs, then you shouldn't have done it in the first place.

Whislt there is a number of these thing s in place that are being breached "out of jurisdiction" I can't see them being legally enforceable if they just get ignored.

MichaelW

I'm baffled.
How is a person supposed to know of the existence of an injunction preventing the publication of this widely known information?
Mr Giggs may or may not be the Premiership Love Rat who banged an alleged Big Brother contestant but if he he IS this person AND he wants everyone not to know, he has to publicise his injunction so we know that we shouldn't speak about Mr Giggs and this extra-curricular activities.
Simples.

DonDaddyD

t4tomo wrote:

I find the whole concept of the super injunction pretty distasteful and odd from a legal perpective.

We have liable laws to prevent spread of mistruths, why should people be banned from telling the truth?

Doesn't this stem from a misinterpretation around human rights privacy laws? The injunction prevents the press from reporting something because a Judge believes it encroaches on a person's right to privacy.

However, the counter argument is how private is a person's life when a large portion of it is played out in the public eye. This I believe to be the core justification why Rooney was refused an Injunction

dhope

DonDaddyD wrote:

There is nothing to stop a Law to be passed that states that any Social Networking websites that wish to be made available within England must agree to X law*

X law being that they are subject to English laws regarding the media, one of which could be that should they request information on users of that website then the Company would have to comply.

If they don't then they could prevent access to their website within England. There are some Countries with Internet 'kill switches' for example.

Indeed. China. North Korea.
We should probably start thumbing through people's hand luggage to make sure nobody brings in a foreign newspaper.

Hardly the model we want to be following.

rick_chasey

DonDaddyD wrote:

t4tomo wrote:

I find the whole concept of the super injunction pretty distasteful and odd from a legal perpective.

We have liable laws to prevent spread of mistruths, why should people be banned from telling the truth?

Doesn't this stem from a misinterpretation around human rights privacy laws?

No it doesn't. That link has been discredited by the judges who decide on issues of super-injunctions.

snooks

MichaelW wrote:

Mr Giggs may or may not be the Premiership Love Rat who banged an alleged Big Brother contestant but if he he IS this person AND he wants everyone not to know, he has to publicise his injunction so we know that we shouldn't speak about Mr Giggs and this extra-curricular activities.
Simples.

I don't think there is anything alleged about it....she was a Big Brother contestant

Whether she and Giggs got down to business...that's the alleged bit

mudcow007

like it was said on daybreak this morning, if said footballer hadn't bothered about the injunction, there would had been a kerfuffle for a few days then it would have all been forgotten about

getting an injunction just causes people to want to talk about it for longer causing more embarrassment for the parties involved

oh there is a difference between injunction and super injunction

super injuction, you cant talk about any detail of the super injunction

where the normal injunction you cant mention details of who the injunction is about

DonDaddyD

t4tomo wrote:

Also what happens if someone breaches a Super injunction? as what is the remedy / punishment?

It's easier to impose an injunction of this nature on a newspaper than it is on a person. I've got no problem with preventing the press from reporting something that really shouldn't be news. Person A having an affair with person C.

However what is unfair is telling person C that they cannot defend themselves due to the injunction.

I'm baffled.

The injunction was imposed on the media and Iomgen. Neither can report the story in such a way that would name or imply Ryan Giggs.

Those parties would know of the injunction details (as well as those in court at the time it was issued). It was believed that this was enough to keep it (Ryan Giggs alleged affair with Imogen) from becoming public knowledge.

It opens a whole quagmire surrounding the 50 or so other super injunctions.

Indeed. China. North Korea.
We should probably start thumbing through people's hand luggage to make sure nobody brings in a foreign newspaper.

Hardly the model we want to be following.

I don't think we should follow this rule either. But the amount of information social networking sites keep and what they choose to give when legally ordered to do so needs to have boundaries set.

DonDaddyD

Rick Chasey wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

t4tomo wrote:

I find the whole concept of the super injunction pretty distasteful and odd from a legal perpective.

We have liable laws to prevent spread of mistruths, why should people be banned from telling the truth?

Doesn't this stem from a misinterpretation around human rights privacy laws?

No it doesn't. That link has been discredited by the judges who decide on issues of super-injunctions.

I don't get that. Super injunctions are issued to keep things private that would be made public by the media. What is the rationale behind issuing super injunctions if not to protect a person's privacy?

And if it is to protect a person's privacy, then can we not defer to our human right to privacy?

Greg66 help me out here.

rick_chasey

DonDaddyD wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

t4tomo wrote:

I find the whole concept of the super injunction pretty distasteful and odd from a legal perpective.

We have liable laws to prevent spread of mistruths, why should people be banned from telling the truth?

Doesn't this stem from a misinterpretation around human rights privacy laws?

No it doesn't. That link has been discredited by the judges who decide on issues of super-injunctions.

I don't get that. Super injunctions are issued to keep things private that would be made public by the media. What is the rationale behind issuing super injunctions if not to protect a person's privacy?

And if it is to protect a person's privacy, then can we not defer to our human right too privacy?

Greg66 help me out here.

The issue is not to do with the European human rights stuff, but to do with privacy laws in the UK.

bails87

DonDaddyD wrote:

However, the counter argument is how private is a person's life when a large portion of it is played out in the public eye.

Now, I don't agree with that. There are certain celebrities who make a character out of themselves based purely on who they're shagging. But there are other people who happen to be very good at their job, hence they rise to the top of their field, which then makes then a target for tabloids and gossip rags. The two are very different. In something like the Trafigura case then there's a public interest case, there possibly is if there's someone in public office, especially if what they've been up to has affected their job. But when the NOTW just want to sell more copies of their god-awful 'news'paper based on who's been bumping uglies with who.....well, it's hard to argue that it's the pinacle of the great principle of 'freedom of the press'.


MichaelW makes a good point. How do papers know what they're not meant to report on. Do they get a phone call from someone's lawyer saying "Mr X did Y to Miss Z, but don't tell anyone. Also don't tell anyone that you can't tell anyone."

DonDaddyD

Rick Chasey wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

t4tomo wrote:

I find the whole concept of the super injunction pretty distasteful and odd from a legal perpective.

We have liable laws to prevent spread of mistruths, why should people be banned from telling the truth?

Doesn't this stem from a misinterpretation around human rights privacy laws?

No it doesn't. That link has been discredited by the judges who decide on issues of super-injunctions.

I don't get that. Super injunctions are issued to keep things private that would be made public by the media. What is the rationale behind issuing super injunctions if not to protect a person's privacy?

And if it is to protect a person's privacy, then can we not defer to our human right too privacy?

Greg66 help me out here.

The issue is not to do with the European human rights stuff, but to do with privacy laws in the UK.

OK so doesn't it stem from a misinterpretation around UK (or England's) privacy laws?

davmaggs

dhope wrote:

DonDaddyD wrote:

There is nothing to stop a Law to be passed that states that any Social Networking websites that wish to be made available within England must agree to X law*

X law being that they are subject to English laws regarding the media, one of which could be that should they request information on users of that website then the Company would have to comply.

If they don't then they could prevent access to their website within England. There are some Countries with Internet 'kill switches' for example.

Indeed. China. North Korea.
We should probably start thumbing through people's hand luggage to make sure nobody brings in a foreign newspaper.

Hardly the model we want to be following.

Your internet connection at home is already filtered and so are search engines, just you won't notice as it is fairly light touch. For example a few years ago there was a little bit of software to crack the licencing on Windows, but Google excluded it from most search results.

The Scorpians had an album cover that was deemed by a self-appointed commitee to be child porn so many UK ISPs blocked access to the page on wikipedia. The sinister bit is that the ISPs just gave a page can not be found error so you wouldn't know it had been blocked. [I tested this story myself using my ISP and they were blocking the page].

There has been interesting discussion in the past about how the world (well those with open societies) are gradually adopting the US constitution without meaning to. As long as the yanks post content then we get to see if despite our laws.

Sewinman

I would love to see a British footballer trying to sue Twitter in a US court...can't see him getting too far!

This law is an ass. I love the civil disobedience going on at the moment. Just as it should be for a silly law.

We have the mad situation now where Giles Coren is being sued by Gareth Barry's lawyers for hinting at his super injunction. The papers can not report this, or the names of the various other celebs who have brocken superinjunctions on twitter - including Frank Lampard retweeting a joke about Ryan Giggs and Imogen Thomas! Giles Coren could even be jailed for saying that a footballer sh&gged some slapper and the papers could not even report that he had been convicted. The conviction would be subject to the superinjunction too and held in secret.

As always, the lawyers are happily lining their pockets. :roll:

davmaggs

Forgot to say that this story is also a media invention, just at the time when the police were really under pressure to get going on the hacking story and probably to make arrests. Notice how there's virtually no coverage of senior tabloid management getting interviewed by the police any more?

rick_chasey

davmaggs wrote:

Forgot to say that this story is also a media invention, just at the time when the police were really under pressure to get going on the hacking story and probably to make arrests. Notice how there's virtually no coverage of senior tabloid management getting interviewed by the police any more?

Depends which paper you read.

Look at the headline:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Prescott wins legal bid for hacking review

kurako

MichaelW wrote:

I'm baffled.
How is a person supposed to know of the existence of an injunction preventing the publication of this widely known information?
Mr Giggs may or may not be the Premiership Love Rat who banged an alleged Big Brother contestant but if he he IS this person AND he wants everyone not to know, he has to publicise his injunction so we know that we shouldn't speak about Mr Giggs and this extra-curricular activities.
Simples.

Private Eye went over this in a recent issue with respect to the Andrew Marr super-injuction. The press get a legal letter stating AM has taken out a super-injunction. You cannot publish details of AM's private life without contacting us first. They were also told not to reveal the fact that AM had such an injunction in place. The idea that you are not allowed to print stories and also not allowed to reveal that you are not allowed to print stories is a bit ridiculous.

If it's a footballer or celebrity chef or even mop-topped motoring tv presenter I really don't give a monkey's but you have to draw a line somewhere. Andrew Marr's journalistic integrity must be called into question and I don't see how he can still have a 'serious' job with the BBC.

dhope

DonDaddyD wrote:

I don't think we should follow this rule either. But the amount of information social networking sites keep and what they choose to give when legally ordered to do so needs to have boundaries set.

There's a huge difference between Twitter and NotW though. NotW decide what appears in print or online and will disable commenting if there's a chance of people revealing what they shouldn't. Twitter doesn't publish anything, it allows its users to publish. I'm not sure whether it's been tested in court but if Twitter is responsible for all user content then it may as well shut down today along with Facebook and every other Social Networking site.

bigmat

I don't see how these injunctions sit with freedom of speech. Wer have defamation laws to make sure people tell the truth. We have data protection laws to make sure people don't get their information in underhand ways. Then we have the PCC for if the press oversteps the mark on a more general basis. If all of the above are operated correctly, a super-injunction will only be necessary to prvent somebody telling the truth about somebody else, which is not something I think the law should be involving itself with.

squired

What I love is the way that the papers report on people who are allegedly involved in these injunctions. There was a nice comment in one article about the guy who is supposed to have been entertained by the working-girl who also entertained Rooney. In the article it talked about this actor and how he was well known as a true family man, etc. In a sense they are trying to give it away, without actually giving it away.

Another great article was based on Mr Giggs last week:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... arpet.html

So, if there is an article about someone being a real family man, is that a hint from the paper that there is a story they are blocked from telling us about?

Sewinman

I wonder what would happen if Imogen Thomas wrote an autobiography (in the form of a two page pamphlet) and then it was serialised in a news paper. We surely can not have a law which prevents people from putting their life story to paper?

Loved the Blackpool fans at OT - "You're not secret anymore", "Are you watching Imogen", "Did she take...etc"

t4tomo

BigMat wrote:

I don't see how these injunctions sit with freedom of speech. Wer have defamation laws to make sure people tell the truth. We have data protection laws to make sure people don't get their information in underhand ways. Then we have the PCC for if the press oversteps the mark on a more general basis. If all of the above are operated correctly, a super-injunction will only be necessary to prvent somebody telling the truth about somebody else, which is not something I think the law should be involving itself with.

+1 for me.

The judges have balls up big time in using this bit of law for celebs to protect themselves from their own misdoings.

The only way that should be enforceable is if they had paid for it. So Bryan Figgs gives BB Slapper £50k to keep her trap shut and is she breaches that she forfeits the £50k or another specified amount. As she has received consideration for her part of the bargain then its enforceable.

Injunction should only be used to protect vinerable 3rd parties, such as children produced by an illicit relationship etc, not the blumin perpetrator of the "acts" in the first place.

roger_merriman

DonDaddyD wrote:

roger merriman wrote:

social media has little to fear to be honest. in this case the law is a ass. and frankly toothless.

Like water information will find a way.

There is nothing to stop a Law to be passed that states that any Social Networking websites that wish to be made available within England must agree to X law*

X law being that they are subject to English laws regarding the media, one of which could be that should they request information on users of that website then the Company would have to comply.

If they don't then they could prevent access to their website within England. There are some Countries with Internet 'kill switches' for example.

yeah and they work well don't they! like I say information will find a way even if it has to resort to using older darker parts of the internet.

discurio

mudcow007 wrote:

oh there is a difference between injunction and super injunction

super injuction, you cant talk about any detail of the super injunction

where the normal injunction you cant mention details of who the injunction is about

the first rule of super injunftion is you dont talk about super injunction.

tri-sexual

super injunctions are only there to protect the rich and famous
whilst i loath the idea of kiss and tell and how some people can profit from "targeting" the rich and famous then exposing the details to the media i think that it is a price that needs to be paid to ensure that the idea of "freedom of speech" is maintained otherwise politicans, the rich, famous, royalty or anyone who can afford it can simply take out super injuctions to hide details of their life (not limited to affairs either),
its not there yet but imagine if someone rich gets a super injunction to hide the fact that he was a war criminal, rapist, murderer, paedophile and is now in a position of power or is seeking for election to a position of power
i have no interest in "celebrity" but as long as people are willing to pay for celebrity gossip, then this cycle will continue.
the people who take out super injunctions should lead a "moral" life instead of running to the courts to hide their dirty secrets

bails87

tri-sexual
But would someone like that get a superinjunction in that kind of case? Knowledge like that would definitely be 'in the public interest', whereas knowing which slapper is shagging which millionaire is not. I suppose we don't know and there might be hundreds of them stopping us from being told things like 'George Osborne likes to pay tramps to give him a reverse dutch steamboat before he kills and eats them'.

But somehow I doubt it.

Oh yeah, and super injunctions allow to start rumours about anyone, because it'll never be proved either way!