Super Injunctions and Internet Democracy

Super Injunctions are normally won on grounds of privacy and human rights. They are particularly difficult to digest because our embedded sense of justice, which accepts judicial restriction on our freedom of speech whenever the truthfulness of the intended publication is questionable, finds it difficult to logically accept similar restrictions on our freedom of speech when the intended publication is likely to contain truthful information.




 We have been brought up to believe that telling lies is wrong, but now it appears the creators of the super injunction are telling us that telling the truth is wrong too.

  We have been brought up to believe that telling lies is wrong, but now it appears the creators of the super injunction are telling us that telling the truth is wrong too. At any other time, this unhealthy mixture of moral messages could have been seen as a massive blow to our democratic system as well as to our personal and social values. However, the on-going democratisation of our world through the internet, which finds its underlying philosophy in the algorithms of the Google search engine, which basically says – ‘let the community decide what is useful, important or even truthful’, has already started to repair any damage to our moral values by insisting that truthful information should be published , if not by a newspaper then by regular Twitter users, if not in the UK, then outside the jurisdiction or the enforcement power of the local Courts.

The democratic nature of the internet has made enforcement of worldwide super injunctions impossible and Parliament needs to act fast to close the gap between what the public accepts as morally wrong (ie telling false stories) and the heavy penalties which the judicial system is willing to impose on those who are responsible for the publication of true stories.

In the rapidly evolving world of the internet, new laws have unintended and unforeseeable consequences which means that judicial attempts to protect one’s privacy are resulting in the forced exposure of the lives of innocent parties. Because Parliament has got the resources to properly assess and develop new law, in the circumstances perhaps it is best to ensure that in future, the law is developed more through Parliament and less through the Courts.

In the meantime, for the simple reason that publication of material on the internet could be done from the most remote parts of the world, and by people who might care very little about what our judges think, super injunctions will suffer death by a mob and sooner or later, either the courts will simply stop granting them or celebrities will realise that in the fast moving internet world, these super injunctions will bring them more harm than good.
Bains Cohen