You Fight Twitter At Your Peril
It has been reported on the BBC that South Tyneside Council have obtained an order in a US Court to indicate who has been posting possibly defamatory statements about councillors and officials.
Type the name of the poster into Twitter and you’ll find a large amount of posts about the postings, most of which support the poster of the statements.
This one will run and run and the only winners will be the lawyers. When do people realise, that if you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is to stop digging.
I can envisage something like this happening in the not too distant future.
- Parliament passes a law that says that anybody who tweets about a superinjunction will feel the full force of the law.
- Someone important billionaire, who has done something he doesn’t want in the papers obtains a superinjunction.
- It is published on Twitter.
- The tweeter gets found guilty, but continues to tweet about the case.
- He goes to jail.
- Others would then tweet the story and be arrested.
So what do we do if hundreds of thousands needed to go to jail?
You Can Fool Quite A Few Twits Quite A Lot of the Time
This article on the BBC proves that there is one born every minute and most are on Twitter.
The Hornets React
I said in this post, that the hornets would react and they have according to this piece on the BBC.
Hundreds of Twitter users have reacted to a footballer’s bid to find out who is putting information about him on the website by posting new messages online.
I’ve just looked and the BBC is right and they’re even easier to find, even if you don’t know the name of the footballer.
I think that this story has run its course, so if Imogen would like a nice meal one evening next week, all she has to do is post a message here and I’ll see what I can do. As the lady is Welsh some nice Welsh lamb in marmalade might be a suggestion. It would be more appropriate if we can find some Welsh marmalade.
But on second thoughts, why would she want supper with me, a broken down widower?
Poking a Hornets Nest
An unnamed footballer, who everybody who wants to know, knows who he is anyway, is trying to take action against Twitter, so that those that posted his name there can be hauled before the Courts to be punished.
All this will do is make matters worse, as many more Twitter users will just add to the posts.
The man, whoever he is, is an idiot and he is just pouring more money into the pockets of greedy lawyers. C did her first pupilage in defamation chambers and if she were still alive today, she would be cursing her decision to go into the much more rewarding field of Family Law, rather than stay in a more lucrative field, that relieves the vain of their easily earned money.
Alex Ferguson and Twitter
Alex Ferguson is quoted today as saying that his players should abandon Twitter and go to a library and read a book.
Why Twitter appeals to the average football and idiots of all kinds, is that because the character limit is 140 characters. Books are generally much longer than this!
On the other hand Boris Johnson was quoted yesterday after his first experience of Twitter was that this character limit makes you think about how to say something concisely. But Boris is a man who knows his words well, even if he sometimes puts both feet in his mouth occassionally.
Perhaps this thinking idea, is what Sir Alex should instill in his players. Lawyers wouldn’t be too pleased, as it would close off the quite a few routes, like superinjunctions of trousering a lot of readies.
Jon Snow on Super Injunctions
Jon Snow has put this on Twitter.
Every single super injunction has now either been tweeted or has appeared in Private Eye: What has Judge Eady who set them up done? Sweet FA
Tweeters Attempt to Break the Super Injunctions
There are reports that users of Twitter are attempting to break the super injunctions.
It’s now getting to the point, where someone with a super injunction might think of doing an Andrew Marr for the money.
Suppose you are an well-known actor, athlete or a footballer say, who has had a brief dalliance with a Z-list celebrity. But your wife is perhaps a sensible woman who has forgiven you and has warned you about future conduct. Remember, strange as it may seem, there are a lot of women married to celebrities, who very much manage the family’s finances and often have a serious career in their own right. Perhaps you just want to act or play football and get on with your life. So you strike a deal with the Z-lister and sell the story. After all, in a footballer’s case the season is almost over and you can find a nice island hotel to hide for the summer.
So someone will take the money, settle with the Z-lister, write a few articles and run.
Once one has done it, the others might fall like a pack of cards.
You have to admit that probably keeping a super injunction going is not a trivial business and costly in terms of both time and money. The bill might hurt more than the adverse publicity.
Twibel
The papers are talking about the problems of libel associated with Twitter. Here’s the Daily Mail, on what happens when it all goes wrong.
It all looks to me like a nice new area for lawyers to earn a few pounds, dollars or euros.
But then it’s not the first tweet, it’s the repeating of that tweet to everybody else. So are we all guilty?
Tweeting My Way South
On the two trips to south London, I used my trusty Nokia 6310i to send messages to Twitter.
In both trips I got a story going; the first about how I’d borrowed the landlord’s dog from the pub next door for protection and in the second about travelling with an attack cat, who got rather agitated in Catford.
Today, I’ll be tweeting my way north, as I’m off to Coventry to see Ipswich Town play.
If you want to follow me, my Twitter ID is VagueShot.
It Pays to Think When You Tweet
There is a story about how a Tory councillor, suggested something not very nice should happen to a journalist.
I’m afraid that you generally don’t make jokes about capital punshment, unless they are positive. For instance, if say someone was exonerated by further evidence like DNA and released, then to make jokes about the legal system is probably OK.
If the councillor had thought, he could have said something quite funny or constructive, that wasn’t offensive. He could have said that he disagreed with Ms. Brown and wasn’t it Tony Blair who took us into Iraq!
C was a barrister and she said that the most telling statement in Court was often nothing with an appropriate look!
The trouble with Twitter is it’s very much in the shoot first, ask questions afterwards camp.
We’ve already got the Cairns case, where Chris Cairns is suing Lalit Modi for libel in the English Courts.
There will be many more.
The Anonymous Widower 