john68 wrote:Ronk,
Sorry mate but I when I used the term "applying the law", it was only in response to Nutzer's question, regarding whether the court's ruling was useless. I was only pointing out that courts can only rule on the law as it stands. It doesn't have an opinion on whether it is a good or useful law. That is the remit of the government.
In the terms you are using that statement, you are right and I agree with the other points you raise.
On the issue of the attack on the media by thugs, I assume (though I shouldn't) that this was carried out by rags' fans as some type of warning to lay off. When added to the threatening incident outside the gates of Rooney's house not that long ago, there does seem to be something very sinister that has attached itself to the rags. Something very gangerous and sinister indeed.
Surely the rags can't let this go without acting?
Yes, and when the judge dropped the Rooney prostitute (&/or the Terry one, I'm not 100% sure) super-injunction one of the reasons given was that monetary damages would be sufficient so there was no need for extraordinary legal instruments. Damage to image rights could have been made good with a huge pile of money, so there was no justification for censorship that owes itself more to totalitarianism than to a free and democratic society. Judges are given sweeping powers under contempt of court, but there is no direct legal basis to justify the extension of rare powers to be used only in the most extreme need to what are really very minor cases with no overreaching case of risk of damage to the public interest. The reason there are higher courts is that lower courts frequently make decisions that do actually end up being changed and successfully appealed, i.e. they're not infallible. To me it should have been perfectly obvious that there was no justification for granting a super-injunction after it was shown before (I almost said last time but we don't know for sure what the last time was) that it hadn't been necessary.
To be honest, I'd rather see the NOTW sued for £20m than told not to publish a story that few actually care about. I don't care that he had an affair with a beautiful C-list celebrity, I care that he used (and was permitted to use) tactics that are a clear breech of the intent and letter of the privacy laws. Some of this stuff is an incredible affront to democracy: attempting to seize all the mobile phone records of journalists at the Sun, preventing the full listing of parliamentary discourse. It's not like I don't think that many of these so called journalists are scum either, the phone tapping thing was unbelievably bad, I'd welcome calls for tighter regulation of journalists within the gutter press, just not this way.
[/center]
