The Ryan Giggs injuction shows just how quickly the world is changing and how slowly the old guard is realising this.
Governments think they decide how everything works in their country.
Companies think they decide how everything works, no matter which country they operate in.
Lawyers pride themselves on being able to write unintelligible documents about any country’s legal rules in any language.
But more and more, individual people are able to use international services over the internet. The people in France, Malaya and India are deciding to use the services provided on the internet by Google, Facebook or Twitter without worrying about where those services reside or whose laws they obey.
The old guard haven’t worked out how to cope with this.
Much of the debate about the Giggs injunction has centred on whether his off-pitch moves meet the public interest test. This is old thinking. Public interest is something you can use in the UK to justify publishing something other people want to hide. Newspapers and broadcasters worry themselves sick over whether something is in the public interest or not.
Twitter doesn’t bother about justifying any of the tweets its punters throw out. It just lets them throw them. The volume of garbage people tweet every days makes it impossible to monitor.
If the twitterati start to gossip about something, they don’t stop to check whether there is an injunction.
Ten years ago, if you wanted to publish something, you needed a fairly big organisation to do it - a newspaper, a magazine, a TV or radio station. If a publisher publishes something it shouldn’t, you can sue it, with a reasonable chance of collecting any damages if you win.
Today, any cheapskate can publish on Twitter, on a blog, with an e-mail. They can do so anonymously if they choose. Try suing an anonymous cheapskate who published on a service run from Tucson, Arizona and see how much you collect.
The Arab spring has shown how the internet allows people’s voices to be heard even in countries which use force to stop them complaining.
The inability of a British legal injunction to keep sexy gossip hidden shows people’s voices can be heard because the old rules were made for the old world.
The internet is allowing the individual to blossom.
Governments think they decide how everything works in their country.
Companies think they decide how everything works, no matter which country they operate in.
Lawyers pride themselves on being able to write unintelligible documents about any country’s legal rules in any language.
But more and more, individual people are able to use international services over the internet. The people in France, Malaya and India are deciding to use the services provided on the internet by Google, Facebook or Twitter without worrying about where those services reside or whose laws they obey.
The old guard haven’t worked out how to cope with this.
Much of the debate about the Giggs injunction has centred on whether his off-pitch moves meet the public interest test. This is old thinking. Public interest is something you can use in the UK to justify publishing something other people want to hide. Newspapers and broadcasters worry themselves sick over whether something is in the public interest or not.
Twitter doesn’t bother about justifying any of the tweets its punters throw out. It just lets them throw them. The volume of garbage people tweet every days makes it impossible to monitor.
If the twitterati start to gossip about something, they don’t stop to check whether there is an injunction.
Ten years ago, if you wanted to publish something, you needed a fairly big organisation to do it - a newspaper, a magazine, a TV or radio station. If a publisher publishes something it shouldn’t, you can sue it, with a reasonable chance of collecting any damages if you win.
Today, any cheapskate can publish on Twitter, on a blog, with an e-mail. They can do so anonymously if they choose. Try suing an anonymous cheapskate who published on a service run from Tucson, Arizona and see how much you collect.
The Arab spring has shown how the internet allows people’s voices to be heard even in countries which use force to stop them complaining.
The inability of a British legal injunction to keep sexy gossip hidden shows people’s voices can be heard because the old rules were made for the old world.
The internet is allowing the individual to blossom.
