News - Footballer reportedly sues Twitter over injunction breach

[HEXUS]

Not happy about tweets revealing what can’t be revealed, it seems.

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[Gordy]

Yeah good luck with that...

I wonder if the footballer has heard of the Streisand effect...

[MoonPig]

Injunctions are the stupidest thing in our legal system.

You **** up, deal with it. Don't mask it from the public.

[HalloweenJack]

remind me again how you sue an anonymous poster from nigeria??

[Saracen]

remind me again how you sue an anonymous poster from nigeria??

While it makes an entertaining notion that a footballer may have the intellectual capacity of a ripe tomato and actually try to do that .... it isn't (apparently) what's going on.

The action against Twitter (and it's far from a foregone conclusion that it'll be successful) is apparently an action taken in US jurisdiction to force Twitter to disclose some limited user information, presumably, to perhaps allow action against that nasty Nigerian, if indeed, a Nigerian would actually care that much about UK super-injunctions. More likely, it would seem, is that the user behind the Twitter leaks is UK-based, and if so, and if he/she isn't smart enough to have taken steps to anonymise their identity even from Twitter (which, in itself, isn't exactly rocket science to do), then it's getting towards time they can start filling their Calvin Kleins with poop, because if they are identified and UK-resident, then it's a fair bet they'll find the fuzz feeling their collar over contempt of court, and an extremely well-off footballer nailing their hide to the wall in a civil court.

And if, of course, that "anonymous" twitter user were to prove to be a member of staff of a UK newspaper that's currently mouthing off with their objections to super-injunctions, then management at that newspaper could end up with their collars being felt, because the courts are NOT going to be amused of it transpires some smart-ar.... alec journalist did an end-run around due process. Let's face it, the judges are peeved enough that a Lord used Parliamentary privilege (on what seems to me to be fairly thin grounds) to assert "national interest" to out Fred Goodwin. And of course, petty politics and a large portion of populist banker-bashing had nothing whatever to do with it.

So imagine what they'll do if they find someone they can nail over breaching one of these things.



I'll tell you what's always puzzled me, though. If the idea of a super-injunction is that not only can the press not publish what the injunction is factually about but can't even publish that there is an injunction, how are we supposed to know what's been injuncted?

I mean, we don't know how many there are, when they were taken out or who they are about. So as a journalist, if I want to write a story about that well-known Premier league footballer, (*) Peregrine Wafflefeather BigTrousers, who is knocking off his teammate's wife, how the hell am I supposed to know there's an injunction to break?

So, to be just in any sense, it has to injunct specific publications, who must then be told they've been injuncted, and by whom, or they wont know who they can' write about. And, presumably, it has to be more than that Mr BigTrousers ("Waff" to his mates) has issued an injunction, and that all mention of him is prohibited, or the newspapers couldn't report that he scored the winning goal in Saturday's leading match. And that would tell pretty much the entire country that Waff had an injunction out, if we know there's a goal, and we all saw it happen, but the newspapers pretend it didn't.

So the papers (and TV, etc) must know what they can't report on. So now, if papers or TV stations didn't know that Waff was knocking off someone he shouldn't be, the injunction has just told them. And if you don't want to risk a paper or TV station you aren't aware has the story publishing it, then you've got to strike pre-emptively with the injunction and tell the nation's entire media what and who they can't write about.

What beggars belief is that people think that this will actually hold in the long term. How long before some pee'd of journalist that is in the know drops an informal nod to a mate at a newspaper in Berlin, or Tokyo, or Seoul, or Karachi, or all of them, and 3 dozen others?

Gordy nailed it .... the Streisand effect.

Once judges work out that they can't actually do much about Twitter et. al., super-injunctions are all but dead. Welcome to the 21st Century, where the little man can stick it to the wealthy, in this way at least, and there isn't much even the wealthy can do about it.



(*) All characters in this post are fictitious and any resemblance to resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.


PS. I seem to remember the US government trying to get user details out of Twitter over some Wikileaks stuff, so far unsuccessfully. I wonder what this footballer, sorry ... "Waff", will do if the Twitter action fails? Invade California?

[Biscuit]

Good point that Saracen, i hadnt even thought of that. To prevent the super injunction being broken, they have to announce what it actually is. Bit of a paradox really >_<

With regards to this case, the lawyers must be loving it. Just pure income on a completely stalemate matter.

[HalloweenJack]

naturally i wouldnt want to mention anyone who may or may not be involved in this


the review earlier had a worrying aspect

But he warned that modern technology was "totally out of control" and society should consider other ways to bring Twitter and other websites under control

control of information in all aspects....


apparantly there are 12 super injunctions which cant even be talked about;

whats also of interest and debate is

Committee chairman Lord Neuberger also said reports of parliamentary comments which tried to contravene injunctions might be in contempt of court.

which beggers the question - since a lord made the comments - would the review be a contempt of parliment... me thinks there be a power struggle right now...

edit: if a judge starts making `issues` towards a sitting lord - they might be reminded who actually appoints them , but thats down to support.

[Bluecube]

Interestingly, The Times has been sailing quite close to the wind with regards to non reporting of super injunctions. A few days ago it had a small side note about how to spot who had taken out superinjunctions by reading captions under photos. It said that you should note where the caption apparently didn't seem to relate to the picture. For example (and I'm making this up BTW) Welsh Maestro scores away from home again with a Really Good goal.

[Gordy]

Gordy nailed it .... the Streisand effect.

Seems like Barbara has got another victim with his name being released. It is now national news not just the red tops.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at the meetings between him and his lawyers.

[Rob_B]

To clarify, since the guy's name is all over the papers are we allowed to mention his name on here now?

[Terbinator]

Who, Giggs?

[Rob_B]

Maybe, maybe not Let's wait for HEXUS to confirm..although it's everywhere isn't it still legally supposed to be hushed? I'm not sure after the Parliment thing.

[Biscuit]

Imogen Thomas is supposedly taking up a singing career, however she will only do Giggs in Manchester

[Rob_B]

Teehee

[sammyc]

^ Giggity, giggity.

[peterb]

Rather poor taste to giggle at the poor girl's misfortune?