It’s all over the news. Super-injunctions don’t work in the modern age, and as a result, the Govt feels compelled to Do Something.
Take Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, who said yesterday,
“Technology, and Twitter in particular, is making a mockery of the privacy laws that we have and we do need to think about the regulatory environment that we have.”
The mainstream media, of course, never miss an opportunity to tell their readers that the Internet is the modern-day equivalent of the Wild West, as the Indy ably demonstrates in “Media freedoms in the balance”:
“Mr Hunt raised for the first time the possibility of a new watchdog to ensure that social media such as Twitter and Facebook were subject to controls similar to those faced by the press and broadcasters, saying there may be a case for converging the regulation of traditional and new media.”
And, from this article in the Telegraph:
“Media outlets are supposed to be prevented from disclosing their names by a series of super-injunctions, which prevent them from being identified. Both Twitter and Facebook, however, are based in the US and outside the jurisdiction of British courts.”
The thing is, the politicians and the media seem to be forgetting that this isn’t a problem caused by social media. In fact, this “problem” has existed in one form or another for years. Go back to Jeremy Hunt’s quote and substitute “The foreign newspapers” for “Technology, and Twitter” and you’ll see what I mean.
Over the years, there have been countless examples where injunctions issued in England have no bearing on what gets published by the rest of the world (and rightly so). Here are two such examples – one fairly recent, and one from 2003:
- Irish Times publishes details of Tiger Wood’s injunction against the UK press.
- Prince Charles secures an injunction against the press in England and Wales, but the allegations appear in Italian newspapers.
Sure, the internet means more people in the UK have easier access to that censored information, but is that the only reason to act on this now? I smell a rat – the Govt seems to be worryingly open to censoring websites at the behest of wealthy groups with Big Media interests; from there, is it such a big leap to include censorship of overseas websites that host injunction-breaking information, too?
