In the UK, a Few Tweets Restore Freedom of Speech

Several readers wrote to us about the situation in the UK that saw the Guardian newspaper forbidden by a judge from reporting a question in UK parliament. The press's freedom to do so has been fought for since at least 1688 and fully acknowledged since the 19th century. At issue was a matter of public record — but the country's libel laws meant that the newspaper could not inform the public of what parliament was up to. The question concerned the oil trading company Trafigura, the toxic waste scandal they are involved in, and their generous use of libel lawyers to silence those who would report on the whole thing. After tweeters and bloggers shouted about Trafigura all over the Internet, the company's lawyers agreed to drop the gag request.

Comments

Massive headline FAIL

[petes_PoV]

Twitter had nothing to do with this. Yes there was a lot of inconsequential twittering about this, but the reason the injunction was lifted was that reputable newspapers outside the UK were carrying the story. Since they were immune from the injunction - and their content was available in Britain, the injunction became pointless and (just like with the Spycatcher book, which was banned in Britain, but freely available in other english-speaking countries, or terrorist plots which were censored in the UK but freely reported by the NYT) were not serving the purpose of stopping british peopole from finding out the truth.

British libel laws are a travesty. To the point where half a dozen US states, including California, have had to pass laws preventing UK libel judgements from inhibiting free speech. There is even a case at present where a Ukranian website is defending statements it made in Ukranian regarding a Ukranian company, but in a British court - as the penalties handed down in British courts are so heavy, and litigation costs so high, that it's financial ruin for a defendant to attempt to defend themselves, even if they are successful.

So much for free speech in Britain.

Full Report

[ThoughtMonster]

The full report is also up on wikileaks, along with some background info.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton_report:_Trafigura_Toxic_dumping_along_the_Ivory_Coast_broke_EU_regulations%2C_14_Sep_2006

Re:One down, an unknown number to go.

[Anonymous Coward]

"enjoined"

Errr...no

[mccalli]

Twitter nothing. This morning they were threatened with being held in contempt of Parliament. That's when it dropped.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Stephen Fry

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK is actually starting to resemble late-communist Central Europe. You can have all the freedom you want, if you make sure you're surrounded with people who don't care about the rules. And most people are starting to not care.

I moved from Hungary, never the most oppressive state in the Eastern Bloc, to the UK in 1998. I don't have words for how delusional your suggestion is. The threat of legal action does have a chilling effect on freedom of speech, but not quite the chilling effect of being beaten senseless or a bullet to the back of the head.

Re:One down, an unknown number to go.

[Bazzargh]

The PQ about Trafigura everyone was twittering was Q61, Q62 was in fact the one mentioned in that Private Eye editorial:
Q62: Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will (a) collect and (b) publish statistics on the number of non-reportable injunctions issued by the High Court in each of the last five years.

With a bit of luck tomorrow we will hear how many of these things have been issued (or at least, get told when we will be told)