Injunctions fail to protect celebrities from Twitter
(DailyMail): The social networking site Twitter today made a mockery of the celebrity trend for using privacy injunctions to hide their identity. A single user, who quickly attracted a following of 20,000, set up an account claiming to ‘out’ those behind the legal gagging orders – but riddled with errors. So many Twitter users began exchanging messages supposedly naming high-profile figures who have hidden their secrets that part of the site crashed. The move exposed the total inadequacy of court rulings which gag the press – but have no effective control over what is published online.
Today Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who is compiling a report on super-injunctions, said: “It shows the utter absurdity of what is being done in the courts. It ignores the way that modern communication works. Normally these things are kept so that only a few people in North London know what is going on. But more recently people have been coming to my constituency surgery and telling me that they know who these people are.”
The move also made plain how the practice of creating injunctions has spawned its own global rumour mill – much of it untrue.
Category: Technology
