Super Injunctions and the Faustian Bargain of The Internet

Today, a Twitter account started to publish details of all the doings of the UK slebs that until now have been hit with Super-Injunctions (an injunction says you cannot talk about Affaire X in the press, a super injunction is that you are not even able to say that person Y took out an injunction to prevent you talking about Affaire X.

(One assumes that a super-injunction does not stretch to this post talking about Twitter talking about super-injunctions. That would surely require a Meta-Injunction....)

Anyway, there is also a right ding-dong going on ( on Twitter of course ) about said Super-Injunctions, and the Pros and Cons of Super Injunctions, on #injunctionssuper and #superinjunctions. Not only that but some people are even making up spurious super-injunctions for fun (shock horror!). Some are funny, some are scandalours, some are sacrilegous, and some are even probably true by the laws of chance.....

The most sadly revealing defensore comments were (i) journo Caitlin Moran's twt:

I'm not really pro self-annointed one-man armies spreading legally unverifiable personal rumours on the internet #superinjunction

and (ii) David Allen Greene's twt:

The mere word #SuperInjunction means otherwise sensible people (want to) believe incredible things. It is like a witch-craze.

To both of these - and the Super-Injunctioneers - I'd say "but what did you expect" ? You can't build an entire media system that hooks people on the gossip around daily doings of every z-list sleb and then complain that, in a gossip vacuum on said slebs, people become extremely curious about the doings of same said slebs.... human nature abhors a vacuum!

In fact I suspect the rumour mill of false super injunctions spawned by said injunctions will bring about its demise faster than anything else....

Not ony that, but I submit the Super-injunction is increasingly useless today, as the information is on "teh internetz" anyway, it just takes a little bit more effort than Googling "Affaire X" from the UK sources (Privacy invasion on the Internet has gone far, far farther than this - I get to all that below).

And this is not even New News. I recall many years ago - 1987 - when an ex-spycatcher published a book called "Spycatcher" (oddly enough) about how he used to catch spies for MI 5. The British Government immediately tried to ban this book being sold or talked about in the UK. This meant it became the "must have" book and for anyone travelling to a country where it was on sale (injunctions not having impact outside the UK), giving it a fame that it actually never deserved (most of the stuff was known or guessable, and it was a fairly dry read) but great governmental contortions were made, including the UK Cabinet Secretary lyin...sorry, being "Economical With The Truth" in an Australian court

Roll forward to 2009 and Trafigura (see our post on this here) tried to muzzle the British press via a super injunction, but of course the stuff was all over the internet from content hosters outside the UK, and consequently all over Twitter. Roll forward to today and everyone with an internet account (c 80% of all Britons) and a bit of curiosity and nous (probably quite a bit fewer, but growing) can enjoy salacious rumours about UK slebs from foreign web hosters, in comfort at home. And then someone puts it all on Twitter.....

Lets look at where we are today with privacy (or the lack thereof)....

To me, Messrs Moran, Greene and the super-injuncting judges are a bit like King Cnut trying to command the sea not to come farther up the beach (or at least wringing their hands about it...). In fact its far worse, as the tide has already swept past their chairs, the wave-edge of the stuff being surfed now is your daily behaviour, in minute detail, on Twitter, Facebook, Google et al. Never mind talking about the Affaire you had, this sort of data can pick out the one you are having - and even predict the one you will have.. (You think I jest.....let me suggest an experiment - print out your twts for the last 3 months or so and look at what someone could tell about you....)

In the Olde Days, Slebs could use The Meedja Megaphone when they desired it, and when it went wrong slap an injunction on it (publicise their good deeds, privatise their bad ones as it were). Of course even that falls over eventually if you carry on too long, but the digital media today is far, far more of a Faustian bargain, as not only do you use it, but it uses you straight back. You may not sell your soul to it, but you can be certain others are selling every little window to your soul - every action is recorded and stored and can be juxtaposed, compared, aggregated, dis-aggregated, sifted etc at leisure.

Which will leave Super Injunctions looking a bit washed out very soon methinks...............

(Update - 24 hours later, the news hits Techmeme)

22nd May Postdate:

Three weels later, and the water is rushing over the feet of the King Cnutian stance of the Politico-Judicial complex as they fall out:

- Judge Neuberger, Master of the Rolls publishes a report essentially saying "don't blame us, we only enact the Human Righst Law wot Them Over There (The Politicians) wrote (just a tad too enthusuastically, mayhap?).

- Politicians use parliamentary priviledge to mention super injunctions in the House in defiance of the judge's orders, in this case for a person who was f*cking the economy at the same time. Heck, even Nero only plucked at violin strings, not G strings.

Now far be it for us to suspect some self interest here, ie that that many politicians want to keep superinjunction options for their own peccadiloes, and the legal system likes the pecuniary rewards of Rich Man's Law, but two "We're rights" clearly make a wrong here, which is clear to everyone outside the unedifying squabble. No only that but it's all over Twitter, and Google helpfully suggest who it's all about. Just type in "XXX XXXX affair" (apply your favourite superinjunctee here) and Google will helpfully tell you what is going on.

And of course, outside the sclerotic laws of the UK this is a non issue, King Cnut long ago toddled back up the beach in the US - no super-injunctions there, just a 250 year old Bill of Rights* !. And as the recent episodes around Dominique Strauss Kahn show, the French "super injunctioneering" system was holding back something far worse than just bonk and tell.

The center cannot hold..... one cannot court the digital media for favours and then complain when it also displays failures.

(*Except, I am reminded by a few wags, for the Kennedys's, who were US Royalty)