Hmm. TL;DR version - communicating the contents of an injunction is not inherently illegal, communicating it to a private mailing list might be actionable, but highly unlikely, especially if the intent is to help supress publication of the information in a wider forum.
Ok, now the longer form. What we are talking about here is civil litigation - so the first thing to clear up is that there is no criminal action involved in publishing the information. Which means if you do publish the information in a way the subject feels is in violation it is up to them to take you to court over it. No police will be knocking on your door :) So the first point to make there is.. how likely are they to take you to court over it? An injunction is a form of legal finding called an "equitable remedy" (we have articles about all of these things BTW, I just checked) which in this case widely prohibits people from a certain act (publishing the info). If you violate the injunction the litigant has to take you to court, which will then decide if you have broken the injunction and, based on your specific case, award some form of damages. This may simply be fines, or worse. >From a technical perspective the litigant may legitimately consider you telling your friends down the pub this information. From a practical perspective, if they took you to court over it they would not get far (because whilst the litigant is able to interpret the order as broadly as he or she likes, the courts interpretation is the binding one). The scope of the injunction depends a lot on the wording, but the intent in this case is to gag the media and other forms of mass publication - a judge is not very likely (at least in my experience of civil litigation) to interpret it so broadly. In addition, if a judge did allow the litigation to go fully before the courts there is great scope to argue that it is a violation of our right to free speech. Finally, if you are simply linking to already published information (i.e. on Wikipedia) there is a fairly strong argument that you are not the publisher of this information. Especially if you make no mention of the actual information in the communication. As the intent is to suppress the data it could be construed under "necessary communique" as part of complying with an equitable remedy. It is all a lot more complex than there is time for to go into in a single email :) but the practical upshot of this is; do not be too concerned about sending links to pre-published content that violates an injunction. The press has put a lot of stress on the terrifying scope and danger of these orders. There is danger (to society) in these things, and there is something to be concerned about. But not on a personal level. (IANAL; my interest in law is academic, but I have the good fortune to work alongside a pile of lawyers, civil and criminal) Tom On 20 May 2011 23:34, geni <[email protected]> wrote: > On 20 May 2011 23:33, Thomas Morton <[email protected]> wrote: > > It's not publishing the info. It's fine. > > Err you are aware that the courts regard sending the information on a > postcard counts as publishing? > > > The point is to stifle mass media. > > That doesn't mean that they are the only people the law applies to. > > -- > geni > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
