Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Prepared To Name Users
whoever57 writes "Ryan Gibbs, a UK footballer (soccer player) had obtained a 'superinjunction' that prevented him being named as the person involved in an affair with a minor celebrity. However, he was named by various users on Twitter. Now, in response to legal action initiated by Mr. Giggs in the UK courts against the users, Twitter has stated that it is prepared to identify the users who broke the injunction if it was 'legally required' to do so. Twitter will attempt to notify the users first in order to give them an opportunity to exercise their rights."
Ryan Giggs
:)
Does that count as breaking the injunction?
This is retarded on a single point. How can they break the injunction if it wasn't directly filed against them. It's not as if all Twitter users work there.
Wrong name in TFS.
You mean people actually created twitter accounts with their REAL NAMES??!??!??? If you're that stupid, you deserve it!
It's Ryan Giggs, not Gibbs.
Maybe the Twits should apply for a super-injunction to keep their name secret? After all, it's not in the public interest for them to be outed and it might hurt their families etc.
Oh, sorry, I forgot - you have to be rich enough.
Or Ryan Giggs could just instruct his lawyers to stop digging him into an even deeper hole, the end result of which will be that he'll have even less privacy than when he started.
A year ago: "Ryan Giggs had an affair" would have been a one-day, one-column bit of news and nobody would have cared.
Today, the thing has been in the papers every day for several months and is going to be the subject of (in the worst case) 75,000 lawsuits.
Similarly, other people who had superinjunctions (including a BBC journalist!) confessed to them, and the affair they had that was the subject of the censorship, and within a day they were out of the news.
Nobody will go to jail - and if they do it'll be so incredibly expensive that you'll be more likely to have riots over the costs than the privacy implications... MP's in the UK have already said it's far too impractical to jail (or even identify) 75,000 people for such a thing, especially when days later an MP themselves used parliamentary privilege to announce who the subject of the injunction was (and Scottish newspapers have already printed it, as have Italian, American, etc. etc.)
And the whole question of superinjunctions has gone so far that the prime minister himself said that he doesn't understand how they were issued and thinks that it's wrong that they were.
Twitter have said they'll co-operate. But nobody's actually ASKED for that data yet. And they probably never will.
She has arisen.
And I'm no fan of soccer or twitter, but just for the record.
Mr Giggs, you are closing the stable door and then flogging a dead horse - its out there. All you're doing now is paying lawyers for some attempt at revenge on the (likely) many who leaked it.
Go make up with your wife and admit you screwed up.
Ironically, if he'd never taken a superinjunction, this story would have been a 1-day wonder and the tabloids moved onto something else.
As far as I can see, anyway. The term super injunction refers to a ban on reporting that there is even an injunction in effect.
Ryan Giggs. Not Gibbs. Agile but hairy Welsh player who's been playing for Man U practically forever. Or maybe the spelling mistake was a bid to avoid a superinjunction?
Brilliantly ignorant. Are you really the only people who don't know the guy's actual name? Who accepted this submission?
His name is Giggs, not Gibbs...
... especially for dictators. Finally you're able to out those pesky rebels.
P.S. Next time keep it in your pants, and you won't have a problem, Ryan.
Wrong mood in TFS.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
HAHA. Ryan Gibbs?! He's the not the long lost BeeGee's brother! Its Ryan Giggs.
Twitter has stated that it is prepared to identify the users who broke the injunction if it was 'legally required' to do so.
Or, to put it another way:
If the law says we must do something, we'll do it.
No kidding. What's important is what they haven't said. They haven't said:
Even though we're a US-based company, we'll honour an order from a UK court.
Nor have Twitter said:
We still plan to open an office in the UK, and there's a good chance that as soon as we do we'll be slapped with a UK court order which we'll have to honour.
According to the media, *he* has requested it.
But then again this is the same media that weren't meant to talk about it ;)
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
And the whole question of superinjunctions has gone so far that the prime minister himself said that he doesn't understand how they were issued and thinks that it's wrong that they were.
Of course the PM is going to say he thinks they've gone too far - he's a toadying populist PR man. Have a read of this: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2011/1232.html. It's the judgement about why the injunction was granted and subsequently upheld. You'll note that, in the judge's opinion, Giggs was effectively being blackmailed and if the proceedings went to trial, he could reasonably expect a permanent injunction against the publication of the story based on this. I find it hard to argue against the existence of the injunction once you've actually read about it.
MP themselves used parliamentary privilege to announce who the subject of the injunction was
It sets a dangerous precedent that MPs wilfully ignore the ruling of a judge (based on law that Parliament enacted by introducing the Human Rights Act) to expose something that blatantly isn't in the public interest. I can understand using parliamentary privilege to expose something like the Trifigura toxic waste scandal, but it's surely in no way correct for them to do the same thing to expose a married man's affair?
Twitter have said they'll co-operate. But nobody's actually ASKED for that data yet. And they probably never will.
I'm not a lawyer and I have no idea if there's any basis under which the Twitter users can be sued. But Twitter has a UK Ltd company so it's pretty obvious that they're going to give up information at the first opportunity rather than become a target themselves.
If twitter releases any info it should perhaps be addresses first (if they have such data). The Giggs story was broken by a Scottish newspaper not covered by the English courts' superinjunction. Therefore, any twitter users not under English jurisdiction are surely also free to release any info they want (I'm not a tweeter or lawyer so don't know if that is accurate, but it's logical). Before releasing names, perhaps they should look into where the tweeters were to see if they were even covered by the super-injunction.
I think they should announce it on national TV that
Mr. X has an affair with Y, and you are forbidden to mention about the affair.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
To explain why this is a big deal:
In the US, freedom of speech is seen as the most fundamental of human rights, trumping all others.
In the EU, the right to personal privacy has been given a higher weight than freedom of speech by the EU bill of rights.
The result of this is that when the two come into conflict -- ie when talking about someone infringes on their personal privacy -- it is privacy that wins in the courts.
The definition of personal privacy is quite hard to nail down, and there are any number of fringe cases, but discussion of someone's sex life is fairly clearly within scope. This is why My Giggs is able to prevent the media from discussing it, and to sue those who do so.
The next argument is about jurisdiction. British newspapers are one thing, but Twitter is based in the US. This is a whole other discussion, and could lead to very long and drawn out (and expensive) legal arguments, but Twitter is sidestepping the whole thing by stating publically that they won't fight it.
I hope that Gigg's lawyers don't manage to convince the judge that there should be a one-size fits all ruling/judgement against people who tweeted about Giggs before the MP broke the gagging aspect of the injunction. This wide-reaching injunction-happy judiciary may be prone to making sweeping punishment-happy rulings that can ruin people's lives more so than being a minor celebrity being caught up in a minor scandal published in low quality tabloids.
This helps dispel some of the myths that are being spread around about this case and others like it.
How an injunction granted by a UK court can apply to a web site hosted in the US or to users of that web site who are located in countries other than the UK.
I agree but what I'd add is that Twitter should be absolutely lambasted for agreeing to hand over the names as that's what really stinks in this scenario.
They're a US company and the data is stored on US servers, they've only just recently opened an office in the UK and did so as part of the British Prime Minister's push for a greater digital economy in the UK but aren't yet heavily invested enough here to be harmed financially.
They are perfectly positioned to outright defy such a request with the ultimatum that they will take their European office to somewhere else such as Paris or any number of other European countries. This would put immense pressure on the PM to make the UK more suitable for tech companies by ensuring our laws are not a deterrent to such innovation as they are currently.
But instead they've chosen to just fuck their users to save themselves a little bit of hassle and at the expense of what would've been some great PR for them in doing what is right.
Worse, it wouldn't be so bad if it weren't the immense hypocrisy of it. Previously Twitter has cashed in on it's useage during the Iranian protests, and the Arab Spring uprisings yet what does this precedent say, that if an authoritarian regime wants names it'll hand them over? or is it simply being two faced here and saying it'll gladly allow dissenting voices in some countries, but not others?
Twitter's stance is pathetic, completely and utterly pathetic. They had here an opportunity to really use this as an example of why countries like the UK can never have a silicon valley because of absurd laws, and instead of using that example to push for a better place for a European HQ they're just doing a Sony and fucking their users for nothing more than an absolutely tiny short term economic gain, one that will likely dent their image and do them far more harm longer term.
Suppose I went to a public library, logged into my Twitter account and forgot to sign out before leaving. Someone uses the terminal immediately after my departure, notices my Twitter account, tweets Ryan's name, then signs me out.
What if a thief ran off with my phone while I was tweeting, tweets Ryan's name, and then the police recover my phone, but not the crook.
Am I liable? How could they prove it was me?
It seems the wording is interesting. Of course they will give up the names if "Legally required" to do so. Otherwise they are breaking the law.... it's not a hard concept to understand.
That said the current action being taken against Twitter is basically just asking nicely. It would be a *lot* more complicated for that "asking nicely" to be come a legal requirement. It would require that a US court issues the request and thus cross continent legal corporation which is a) expensive and b) time consuming and c) subject to calif. priviacy laws. If things don't line up correctly, there will be no "legal requirement" and thus the names will not be given up.
That's my interpretation of it at any rate.
i initially misread "injunction" to be "injection" and had a much more interesting summary as a result
If the injunction is not public, how would I know not to write about Mr Giggs or whoever he may be.
So basically Twitter are saying that they'll do what a court in their own jurisdiction tells them to do.
Isn't that stating the bleedin' obvious? Seriously, did anyone expect Twitter company directors to say "Sure, I'll do jail time to defend some foreigner's rights to call the star of a sport that we don't even play, a slut."
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Having business interests in the UK is not the same as the UK having jurisdiction over a company or person. The mere fact that twitter trades with UK citizens does not (necessarily) give the UK jurisdiction. Dealings with Twitter are presumably carried out under US law (or to be more specific, whichever state Twitter has headquarters/ a significant office in)
See the recent George Hotz case for an example of whether the courts have jurisdiction over the case (Mr Hotz claimed he had minimal association with California and couldn't be sued there).
Similarly, unless Twitter has a significant UK office, it is governed by US law and not UK law. (I agree it is not always as black and white as this) Twitter has simply stated that they will comply with legally valid requests, but they may be well within their rights to contest the validity of the request as the reason the information is sought is not an offence in the US.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
...of social networking. Yeah, yeah, I know, Farcebook and Twit-er are likely here to stay for a while longer, but toss enough legal cases around them, and their popularity will die faster than William Hungs comeback album.
Only applies in England and Wales. Scottish newspapers and other media are controlled by Scottish law, different from English law. Not sure about Northern Ireland, don't think it applies there either. Ah Giggsy, looks like your away game needs working on...
He'll probably not thank you for calling him English either.... ;-)
The qualifier is "... if legally required". Hate to break it to you, but there's darn near no corporation on the planet which will outright refuse to do something if they're clearly legally required, especially if compliance is cheap. The ones with balls will refuse to do things they're not legally obligated to do, and a few will even refuse to do things which fall into legal grey areas, but otherwise they'll do it. I this case, Twitter hasn't actually done anything except, maybe, compile that list just to ensure they know they could do it if they were asked properly.
Now, that being said, it stands to reason that Twitter will probably ignore any legal requests from inapplicable jurisdictions. This may or may not include the UK. They may also contest requests where they think they might have a strong legal backing (i.e. privacy laws).
Log in or piss off.
If you mess up you shouldn't be able to order everyone to not talk about it. What kind of message does that send to children?
1. The top soccer players earn an absolute fortune so can buy themselves any legal representation they want whenever they want to.
2. Soccer fans are too caught up in their gang mentalities to realise that they are being ripped off by everyone around them - they pay huge premiums for annual season tickets but it's the Sky Sports channel that dictates when the games start (which can be a different time each week) so it fits in with their live programming schedules.
3. Those same fans also pay a premium for Sky Sports in order to watch the games.
4. Soccer players do not believe the laws that apply to the rest of UK citizens apply to them. Many are ill-behaved thugs both on and off the football field, and the poor example they set to youngsters has now filtered down to amateur leagues and schools where complaints about abuse against soccer referees is now common over here.
5. Because of the bad reputation set by a minority of troublemaking fans, you cannot, even with a highly priced season ticket, drink any alcohol while watching a live game.
There's a well known saying over here:
"Soccer is a gentleman's game played by thugs, whilst rugby is a thug's game played by gentlemen."
And that's why I personally follow rugby and despise soccer - it's a better game, I can have a beer while I'm watching it, I can even have a friendly beer or two with opposing fans in the pub afterwards (rather than in soccer where lines of policemen separate fans entering and leaving the stadium) and it's more entertainment for much less money.
Plus it's incredibly rare for a rugby player to make the headlines for bad behaviour or shagging some other woman.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
of the "civilized" internet.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
To be fair, the season ticket in 2) only gets you in to one team's games, while the Sky Sports subscription in 3) lets you watch all the other games too.
That said I too despise football and the primitive tribal mentality displayed by so many of its fans.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I've got a lot of sympathy for the Brits. Our government is based off theirs, and at times they do a better job of protecting their citizens rights. But sometimes, not. Our Bill of Rights was formulated with being under the more oppressive side of the British government.
The internet is becoming less and less free every day. Eventually everyone will need to use a certificate just to make a socket connection.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Regardless of the anatomical nature of Twitter's owners, it sounds like (a) they want to operate in the UK and (b) they're aware of "Godfrey vs Demon":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_v_Demon_Internet_Service
So Twitter is supposed to name names of those who named names?
"You know by tattling on your friends, you're really just tattling on yourself. By tattling, you're just telling them that you're a tattletale. Now, is that the tale you want to tell?"
I am not a crackpot.
But when they do, it's a choice lady. Remember who it was that Will Carling (captain of England national rugby team) (allegedly) had a fling with?
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
What's that smell? Oh, it's the Streisand effect!
So who's this guy and what did he do again?
So much for rugby players avoiding headlines for bad behaviour or shagging some other woman.
Plus it's incredibly rare for a rugby player to make the headlines for bad behaviour or shagging some other woman.
Heh, it's rare, but when they do - they do it royally* :)
But why even make such a statement? Why not make the point of saying that they'll consider moving their office location should there be any sign of such legal obligations? It's not as if they've had their office here for more than a few weeks so there's really very little to lose at this stage for them- again, particularly when they have the ear of the prime minister.
By simply saying "Yeah, we'll hand it over if we're legally obliged" they're really saying "We really can't be bothered to fight this one, so even if the most absurd legal ruling comes along we wont bother to fight or appeal it, we'll just bend over and screw you, our users, over". The complete lack of fighting talk, the complete lack of concern at what they might be asked is telling enough.
You only have to contrast this statement which is extremely submissive, with previous statements from them when faced with ultimatums from elsewhere, including the US government to see that they really do not seem concerned about just bowing down and handing it all over in this case.
Fundamentally you're right, that they when you say most corporations wont even fight it if compliance is cheap, but that's something I addressed in my previous post- this is classic short sighted economics, it's where Sony has fallen over and over- rootkit DRM, chasing the likes of GeoHot etc. ignoring the long term harm this does to their reputation to the point they're now being humiliated over and over and over by discontented hackers. Ignoring the long term damage this will do to them as a platform is stupid. Think any users in the middle east, africa, asia, or any other authoritarian regimes will trust them ever again if they do that?
They can't pick and choose when they want to be defenders of freedom, they've milked the suggestion that they are for some time, and if they're not then shame on them for lying to us all along.
Choice lady? She was a vain, thick, needy sloane.
If you don't want people to know your having affairs, stop f*cking people. That is all.
You forgot to say "it's called football".
Another reason (there are many!) to avoid twitter like the plague! And to the judges who grant the stupid-injuncyions and hype-injunctions...ever hear of the Streisand effect?!
And that's why I personally follow rugby and despise soccer - it's a better game
[citation needed]
Personally I think rugby is deathly boring. Run, pass, slam into opponent. Run, pass, pass, slam into opponent. Run, pass, slam into opponent. Run, slam into opponent. Ruck... pass, run, slam into opponent. Run... good run, close to a try! Slam into opponent, lose possession. Opponent team runs. Slam into opponent. Pass, run, slam into opponent.
It basically is as exciting as that.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Whilst Scots Law may have three possible verdicts, two of them have exactly the same meaning in law. "Not guilty" and "not proven" both mean that the accused is acquitted of the charges. It stems from olden days where there were two slightly different court systems in Scotland, one system used guilty and not guilty, the other system used guilty and not proven. When the courts systems were merged they couldn't agree of which of the "innocent" verdicts to drop, so kept both of them. However juries sometimes use the "not proven" verdict to say "we think you did it, but there wasn't quite enough proof".
Sir Walter Scott referred to "not proven" as the bastard verdict.
But why even make such a statement?
Most likely because they were asked. Someone said "If you are legally required to hand over the data, what will you do?" and instead of telling an elaborate story about the weather and hoping no one noticed that they had changed the subject, they answered the question. Of course they'll comply with a legal request for the information. They're legally obligated to.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
sitting here in new york city, i care fuck-all about the gossip surrounding the romantic life of some minor euro soccer player. and yet, due to the effort to cover up that gossip, i now know all about it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
TV Announcer: The Continental Soccer Association is coming to Springfield! It's all here--fast-kicking, low scoring, and ties? You bet!
Bart: Hey, Dad, how come you've never taken us to see a soccer game?
Homer: I...don't know.
TV Announcer: You'll see all your favorite soccer stars. Like Ariaga! Ariaga II! Bariaga! Aruglia! And Pizzoza!
Homer: Oh, I never heard of those people.
TV Announcer: And they'll all be signing autographs!
Homer: Woo-hoo!
TV Announcer: This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on earth: Mexico or Portugal!
The biggest problem is having super injunctions in the first place!
About who some British soccer player is screwing. (I am assuming they are consenting adults - its not like the IMF guy raping hotel maids...)
I hope the people reading the above post take it with a pinch of salt. Most BBC discussions reflect at least two opposing viewpoints so my guess is if the parent's posts are being killed off by the moderators there's another reason for it. My views aren't consistently left or right-wing and I've never had a post censored in the fashion described. Maybe your posts are censored because you keep alleging bad faith on the BBC's part?
You'd have to ask them. To me, it seems like the corporate PR equivalent of "yeah, whatever, here's an official statement on some stupid shit we don't think affects us".
Log in or piss off.
1. Parliamentary privilege is not at all 'over-ruled' by injunctions - it protects MP's speech in Parliamentary proceedings, not the speech of others to them. Carter-Ruck writing to an MP to claim the Trafigura injunctions applied to his statements in Parliament doesn't make it true.
2. People do have rights under a super-injunction - they can go to court to have the injunction overturned. If Twitter notifies a user they have breached an injunction before the offending tweet is removed the user has an opportunity to go to court.
3. Media organisations were invited to the recent hearing about the ending of Ryan Giggs' injunction and it's almost certain that a review to be published shortly will say that media organisations will be invited to make representations when an injunction is sought.
Don't nitpick if you're going to get it wrong!
But you'll be renditioned. Just like those people from europe who flew past the USA, never entered the USA and were taken off the plane and arrested because a US law said what they were doing was illegal.
Halfback passes to center, back to wing, back to center, center holds it... holds it... holds it!
Plus it's incredibly rare for a rugby player to make the headlines, full stop.
Fixed that for you.
Why not make the point of saying that they'll consider moving their office location should there be any sign of such legal obligations?
Right. Because if there's one thing we need more of is companies and corporations with the power to threaten governments into submission, or dictate to governments which of that country's laws they will or will not follow.
I realize that sometimes a corporation may seem like the only entity with the resources to push back against the government, but that's an unbelievably dangerous situation to actively promote.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
I'm pretty sure they messed up the guy's name so that they could get around that superinjunction :)
You're no Brit!
No self-respecting Brit would call Football *shudder* 'soccer'! X-P
If the site that posted the material was in the US or a person within the US made the postings what jurisdiction would a British court have? And if it can be posted by Americans just how would Great Brittan have any expectation at all that such materials could be kept from public view? If we all England to have a voice in controlling American free speech we might as well invite the Taliban to censor us as well.
Have you seen the chick he banged? I wouldn't have kept it in my pants either.
So Giggs fucked some tramp and he's trying to keep it a secret to keep his name clean. Does he know that he may be forever tying his name to the erosion of liberty the world over? Penny smart pound stupid.
Firstly it's Giggs not Gibbs.
Secondly this was a plain injunction not a super-injunction. If it had been a super injunction then the papers would not have been able to print that there was an injunction in the first place and people would never have been gossiping about who nobbed Imogen Thomas.
I've already named him in my blog. See my signature line for the URL.
My web domain.
haha. You my friend have not lived in Australia!
just a quick google search makes for some interesting reading: http://www.google.com/search?q=australia+rugby+player+sex+scandal&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-Address&ie=&oe=
Not true.
If a tabloid decides to write about the affair they think he's having, then Mr Giggs has a problem. It doesn't actually matter whether he had an affair or not.
The real problem is certain journalists (professional or otherwise) intruding on the private lives of celebrities. To my knowledge, Mr Giggs has no official business in promoting public morality. Ergo, the public has no reasonable right to know about his morals.
The way you write it, that's not much different than American football, and look how huge that is in the US.
But at least they know how to pick their mistresses, unlike their U.S. counterparts. I'm talking about the politicians of course, whose range of selection go from teenage boys to the cleaning lady.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Okay so I guess then I can order that no one should say my name at all. The new punishment is death.
Most folks who have affairs with minors go to jail :-)
Twitter is a little snitch.
Just another reason to not have given Twitter this information in the first place.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What I'd like to see is a British super-injunction to up against Wikileaks. That would be worth tossing a bag of popcorn into the microwave to enjoy.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
where nobody on the internet knew your real name.
Facebook has a lot to answer for, changing the paradigm like that.
I can't wait till people start wising up and go back to using pseudonyms and learn what disposable email addresses are for.