| Gossip-Seekers Hit Web to Defy UK Royal
Muzzle By Bernhard Warner LONDON (Reuters) - The British press may be banned from revealing the details of the latest royal family scandal, but it hasn't stopped gossip-mongering Internet users from weighing in with their two cents. Web sites that sprung to life covering every twist and turn of the British royal family have been flooded in the past week by scandal-hungry newshounds looking for details they cannot get in the newspapers or on television. Alternative news Web sites, Internet news groups and discussion boards have once again become a favored source for details on Michael Fawcett, the former royal servant who sued to stop a paper printing the allegations. Because of legal pressures and the United Kingdom's notoriously iron-clad libel laws, the established media is steering clear of reporting what the actual allegations are. But on the Web, for now, such concerns don't apply. Even while British broadsheet The Guardian fought a legal battle this week to reveal Fawcett's name, his identity began to appear on a handful of Web sites and in online newsgroup discussion forums. Legal experts questioned the practicality of silencing news outlets when the identity had already been revealed online. Mark Prinsley, a partner in the Intellectual Property & IT Group at law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw said such Internet revelations are quickly eroding the ability to keep information of general public interest confidential. "Ultimately, there's a kind of snowball effect where confidential information becomes too widely known and it becomes futile to continue with injunctions to preserve confidentiality," Prinsley said. In late September, some small-fry Web sites and discussion groups gave explicit details of a case in which British professional soccer players were alleged to have attacked a teenage girl. All allusions to the soccer players were removed within days, though, as the sites feared being sued for violating defamation laws. The Fawcett case is more problematic for the courts, said John Derek Tulloch, chair of the department of journalism at the University of Westminster. The legal argument for restraining the publication of even basic details of a story become largely irrelevant in the Internet era, he said. "The simplest way to undermine an injunction of this kind is to make it available to another publication. It used to be done all the time by alerting the international press corps," said Tulloch. "This is good news for those who believe in free _expression_," said Tulloch. The downside, he added, is for those who want their privacy preserved. | |
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