[/caption]Michael Cosgrove - A couple of recent news events have demonstrated that the Internet is making an ass of laws which stipulate what the press can and cannot report, and they can no longer be enforced in any real sense.
Britain has laws called 'super-injunctions.' They are sometimes used in cases of sex and other scandals implicating mostly rich or influential people such as politicians, stars of entertainment, well-known sporting personalities and prominent businessmen to obtain a ban on the press naming them. And, hard as it may be to believe, there is an even more draconian law called a hyper-injunction which even bars the press from mentioning the very fact that "someone" obtained a super-injunction in the first place. Under this law it is forbidden to mention the existence of a super-injunction to journalists, politicians and lawyers.
Rumors began to circulate recently that an at-the-time anonymous British soccer star with a wife and four children had obtained a super-injunction for an extramarital affair he is alleged to have had. Enter the bloggers and other countries' press who did name him, thus making his name available to all. Then it was Twitter's turn and the last couple of days have seen 75,000 tweets, mostly from British users, which named him. Yet the press could still not name him.
Salvation for the press finally came today in the form of John Hemmings, who is a Member of Parliament. He used his parliamentary immunity from prosecution for anything he says in the House of Commons to name the person as being Ryan Giggs, a top-flight and highly-respected soccer player who plays for Manchester United, the English Premier League champions. Once he uttered the words "with about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on Twitter, it is obviously impractical to imprison them all...." the press was free to name him too because they cannot be prosecuted for publishing anything said in Parliament, and they did not hesitate to do so in the minutes that followed the remark.
These events have shown that the law is hopelessly capable of being enforced. British authorities could take Twitter to court of course, but as Twitter is an American company they would have to attack it in an American court under American law which, of course, would not consider Twitter's actions to be illegal because the constitution gives them the right to free speech. The same goes for bloggers in other countries and the world's press.
The other story concerns, of course, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the accusations of rape he is facing. French laws ban the publishing of a prisoner in handcuffs and they are trying to call the French press to order for having published images and video of DSK in handcuffs, and although the press has reduced the number of photos, it insists that it is not realistic to be banned from printing what any French person can see elsewhere on the Internet. As for super-injunctions, the French law is quite simply unenforceable and impracticle.
The same goes for details of French politicians' private lives, which are all but impossible to comment upon either because of legal constraints or cozy arrangements between those in power and the press. They are available all over the Internet on foreign sites to any French citzen who wants to read them. Privacy laws are sure to be severely tested in France as a result of the DSK case and indeed rumors are already circulating about other politicians.
All kinds of questions can be asked about the public interest in naming those who are involved in scandals as well as the public's insatiable appetite for scandal stories, but the plain fact is that law which cannot be enforced is bad law. It's time these laws were scrapped.
