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.
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.
P.S. Next time keep it in your pants, and you won't have a problem, Ryan.
They are afraid to get sued if they use his real name.
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.
This is exactly what was done, for weeks.
The female half of the affair was named. The male half was identified as "a Premiership footballer", and it was explicitly stated that the injunction meant they were forbidden to name him.
It has been a farce.
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.
It's not a UK court, it's an English court - which means that newspapers in Scotland are free to publish his name. Media in the US should be able to do the same.
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.
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
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.
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.
It doesn't, and it's not Twitter that is under threat of prosecution but the English and Welsh users who have defied the injunction. Twitter have merely announced that they'll comply with any legal requests for information that are made concerning the injunction.
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.
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.