Injunctions

[poliphilo]

Gossip is a basic, low-down human activity. It's hard to see how society could function without it.

 

Sometimes it's malicious, sometimes merely informational.  

 

If gossip is untrue it becomes slander and libel. And it can be addressed in law. No problems there.

 

But if the gossip is true it functions as a kind of rough justice. Mr Moneybags the adulterer may not like being talked about, but tough; he should have kept his trousers on.

 

And if he goes round the neighbourhood trying to shut people up he becomes a bully and an oppressor.

 

And that's at least as bad as being an adulterer.

 

I don't know whether gossip can be defined as a human right, but when someone tries to stop me doing it I feel that it is- and then I rebel and get stroppy and feel all righteous about it.

 

Most people do. Which is why a certain footballer's name is all over the Internet and his mug shot is on the front page of a Scottish newspaper and everybody is laughing at him.

Comments

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I *really* dislike gossip, having been the subject of quite a bit of untrue stuff over the years (and some true, most of which you can spot because it is far more unexpected and juicy than the tabloid-dull things people make up). I tend to be interested if someone's telling me that a dear friend is in difficulty or is happy. But if it's about someone I barely know doing something I don't care about with someone else I barely know, I cut people off because I find that kind of thing unbearably boring and it makes me think a great deal less of whoever is telling me it.

What's that quote... Mansfield/OH, 1917: "It has been said that there are three grades of mentality. People of the lowest mental grade talk about people, those of the next talk about things, and those of the highest talk about ideas."

... of course it omits "and arseholes censure what other people talk about."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been an adulterer and cheating love rat in my time. I guess I got gossiped about. Someone once told me that I was known in my old haunts as The Randy Rev of Royton.

I was randy, I was a Rev- what's to complain about?

Normally I could care less about footballers and their floozies. I don't follow their sport. I only get riled when they start making it illegal for us to talk about them.

And sometimes it is in the public interest that we know about the carryings-on of the rich and famous. For example it would have been a very good thing if Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been gossiped about more. The same is arguably true of Fred Goodwin.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think there's another issue with these superinjunctions in that they seem to be taken out by powerful men, leaving the not-powerful women they have had their indiscretions with to bear the brunt of the press's worst excesses - and unable to defend themselves. That's not right.

On the whole, I am anti-super-injunction.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A law that only benefits a small portion of the population- ie. rich powerful males- is a very questionable kind of a law.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I just wish we were concluding that based on the shady activities of various large companies, rather than based on where some no-account footballer has put his willy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes. But if we don't destroy these injunctions the shady corporations will use them- as they have done in the past and may still be doing for all we know.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm not sure I am being plain enough here: I agree with you. I don't like superinjunctions. I don't think they ought to be granted.

Seen this?

http://www.fleetstreetfox.com/2011/05/do-not-read-this.html?spref=tw

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So there are 80 out there- and we have information about a handful of them- hmmmmm......

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

In the end the law is going to be unenforceable, and that will stop the daftness quite soon. What kind of genie did Tim Berners-Lee let out of the bottle?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

After Giggs people are going to think twice about wasting their money on injunctions.

I like how parliament and the judges have been bouncing off one another- the way they were designed to do. I think today- indeed this whole series of events- has been good for democracy.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

The basic structure of the internet (technically and conceptually) far preceeds Tim Berners Lee. It was designed to survive a war; it assesses damage and then routes around it. And censorship is just another form of damage.