
Forget the Streisand Effect, I Think We've Seen the Dawning of the Giggs Effect - grellas
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110520/16102414365/forget-streisand-effect-i-think-weve-seen-dawning-giggs-effect.shtml
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cstross
Point of note:

0\. I live in the UK.

1\. I don't do Twitter. (I'm an old fogie.)

2\. I don't follow Premiership Football. Or watch TV. I couldn't point to Ryan
Giggs in a police ID parade ...

3\. ... Nevertheless, without doing any searching, I learned who was behind
the superinjunction last Thursday.

The internet doesn't so much leak information as allow it to flood out
incontinently through media such as mailing lists or IM or chat which are as
easy to control as conversation in the street. And if Lord Judge thinks he can
make an example of a journalist and a single internet service (Twitter) and
make it stop, he's sadly deluded.

~~~
JonnieCache
_1\. I don't do Twitter. (I'm an old fogie.)_

Don't worry about this. I have never actually met anyone under the age of
forty that used twitter for anything except perhaps extracting money from
other people, and that doesn't really count. The only people I have met who
use it seriously for social interaction were all "fogies," and they pretty
much exclusively work in the media.

I know a fair few hackers IRL as well, and none of us have ever used twitter
with anything but reluctance. As far as I'm concerned, twitter is something
mysterious done by _other_ people on the internet, like fanfiction, and
selling giant penises or whatever it is they do in second life. And, as we all
know, the other people on the internet aren't _real_ people anyway.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I think I might be the only person on HN who actually really likes Twitter.
I've found it to be a fantastic way to interact with other developers, find
beta testers, head off customer freak outs (many people will complain of your
app on Twitter instead of directly contacting you) and other really useful
tasks.

------
andrewcooke
for those that don't follow uk politics, this is hopeful news. the hope being
that the uk's terrible laws related to censorship will break down.

obviously, who ryan giggs has screwed is neither here nor there. but the same
laws were famously used to shield a company - trafigura - that dumped toxic
chemicals off the coast of africa. this doc from wikileaks
[http://www.wikileaks.ch/wiki/Minton_report:_Trafigura_Toxic_...](http://www.wikileaks.ch/wiki/Minton_report:_Trafigura_Toxic_dumping_along_the_Ivory_Coast_broke_EU_regulations,_14_Sep_2006)
describes how "The UK media has been suppressed from mention the report or its
contents since a secret gag order was issued against the Guardian newspaper on
September 11, 2009."

it was twitter that helped expose that, too -
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/14/trafigura-
fiasco-tears-up-textbook)

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StrawberryFrog
The judge says: <http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2011/1334.html>

"It is obvious that if the purpose of this injunction were to preserve a
secret, it would have failed in its purpose. But in so far as its purpose is
to prevent intrusion or harassment, it has not failed. The fact that tens of
thousands of people have named the claimant on the internet confirms that the
claimant and his family need protection from intrusion into their private and
family life. The fact that a question has been asked in Parliament seems to me
to increase, and not to diminish the strength of his case that he and his
family need that protection. The order has not protected the claimant and his
family from taunting on the internet. It is still effective to protect them
from taunting and other intrusion and harassment in the print media. "

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motters
The whole thing is an exercise in silliness, but it keeps newspapers in
business I suppose.

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StrawberryFrog
This sums it up well: <http://storify.com/themanwhofell/supeinjunction>

Freedom of information is good, but I'd rather this kind of fuss was used to
find out about things like the Trafigura scandal. I don't even care at all if
a footballer is playing away from home with some pop-tart. That's not
surprising, nor is it worth reading in a newspaper in my opinion.

It's sad that this is what it takes to motivate the public.

------
marshray
So which footballer is going to be the first to get paid to change his name to
"example.com", have an affair with a model, and obtain a superinjunction?

~~~
dasil003
No one because footballers frequent neither reddit nor 4chan.

