The End Result Of Superinjunctions: The Count The 'Can't Be Nameds' Game
from the drink! dept
Following on the Giggs Effect, it appears there have been some interesting developments. First, the BBC now feels comfortable naming Ryan Giggs after MP John Hemming used Parliamentary privilege to name Giggs while discussing this whole mess:"Mr Speaker, with about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs it is obviously impracticable to imprison them all."Gotta love the understatement of the word "impracticable."
Meanwhile, a different footballer (not Giggs apparently) who has a similar injunction is causing some additional interest after asking the Attorney General (who I'm sure has better things to do) to go after a famous unnamed journalist for a famous unnamed publication who posted an unlinked-to Tweet that mentions the unnamed footballer during an unnamed match. Seriously. Read the story and count what can't be named. Just don't take a drink each time, because you might not make it to the end:
The England footballer, known only by his court codename of TSE, instructed lawyers to ask the judge to pass the case on to the Attorney General’s office. And he agreed.
Due to the extraordinary restrictions surrounding the reporting of cases such as this, The Mail on Sunday cannot identify the journalist involved nor even provide readers with edited versions of his tweets.
It is believed that the messages were written about the player during a recent high-profile football match, which again The Mail on Sunday cannot identify due to court restrictions.
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Filed Under: free speech, giggs effect, ryan giggs, superinjunctions, uk
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1. They did reveal that the game played was FOOTBALL!
2. They also revealed that the case would be forwarded to the ATTORNEY GENERAL!
Ahhh! Idiots, What are they thinking? Do they want to get sued?
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The irony is that unlike Giggs, Barry is not a footballer many people had heard of - well, they have now - and Giles Coren is hardly a household name.
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Initials?
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Are you chicken?
That sounds like a challenge.
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An appropriate response:
Someone else could keep a superinjunction superlist, preferably hosted outside the UK. Even in the UK, one would imagine it be acceptable to report on who actually has a superinjunction (otherwise how would you know who you couldn't write about???)
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The shoking thing
Either everybody's privacy is respected or nobody's, but it can't be one-sided like that.
Ryan Giggs has rightfully earned his place in history as one major a*hole taken down by the Internet. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.
Don't fuck with the Internet.
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Impracticable?
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The whole affair is likely to end with the judges getting a harsh lesson in the realities of politics and the internet. Challenging the authority of Parliament is suicidal, almost as foolish as trying to control the internet.
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Other thning that can't be named
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This wasnt a superinjunction
Injunctions sometimes serve a useful purpose, especially in defamation or privacy cases. Although they should be used sparingly they do protect the ideals that you are innocent until proven guilty and mud sticks.
Superinjunctions are normally really, really bad things. They actual prevent the reporting the fact an injunction has even been granted. Normally you can report a "footballer" has an injunction which allows the Giggs effect to work its magic. If this was a superinjunction we'd never even know it existed...
Please dont confuse the two. We should have the debate on superinjunctions but calling normal ones super makes the debate meaningless!
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