Legal injunctions prohibiting the publication of information about the supposedly private lives of famous people enjoying seven figure remuneration, such as bankers and football stars, have recently been defied by postings on Twitter and the internet.
(American banks tend to call it not 'remuneration' but 'compensation', and it normally comes in 'packages' - compensation for what private loss, one wonders - in this country bank compensation more normally means payments to depositors in failed banks.)
To return to the defiance of injunctions: ‘Lord Judge said he believed that ways would be found to curtail the "misuse of modern technology", in the same way that those involved with online child pornography were pursued by the police. "Are you really going to say that someone who has a true claim for protection perfectly well made has to be at the mercy of modern technology?" he asked.’
Our culture secretary, the celebrated Jeremy Hunt, accused Twitter of 'making an ass of the law'. It was of course Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist who famously yoked together the law and an ass, when he had Mr Bumble observe that if 'the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction' then 'if the law supposes that ... the law is a ass'. Well, Mr Hunt is only our government minster responsible for culture, but had he been a little more familiar with his Dickens he might have concluded that the law is not being made an ass now, but is already an ass for supposing that Twitter will act under his or its direction.
Abhorrent though the activities of paedophiles are, there is something deeply disturbing about the almost unrestricted panoply of official investigation, restrictions, and surveillance, and public demonization being applied to the internet pedlars of inconvenient or even false information. Lord Judge’s sentiment may be laudable, but his proposal presages a new apparatus of official control whose application will outrun the avowed intentions of those who introduce it, and will include no protection for the unprivileged from 'the proud man's contumely ... the law's delay, the insolence of office'.
‘The report also says that media reports of comments made in parliament which set out to contravene injunctions may be in contempt of court. Reports of statements in the Commons and Lords are only protected by parliamentary privilege if they are published "in good faith and without malice".’
