A tangled web

As the judiciary scrambles to keep up in a world where social networking makes a mockery of gagging orders, Nigel Burton asks what now for the player and the law?

LAWYERS call it the Streisand effect – the curious online phenomenon that happens when a celebrity tries to hide or remove information from the public domain and unintentionally publicises it to a far wider audience.

It was coined when the actress and singer Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman for £30m in an attempt to have aerial photos of her home removed from a publicly available online archive.

Adelman unwittingly snapped the singer’s house while documenting parts of California for a coastal erosion project.

But Streisand’s futile attempt to have the photos removed had the opposite effect. Within a month, more than 420,000 people had visited the website to see the photos. Eight years later, the pictures are more widely available than ever.

It is highly unlikely that Ryan Giggs has ever heard of the Streisand effect – according to the Manchester United website his favourite music is hip hop and indie, not middle-of-the-road show tunes – but he is certainly familiar with the consequences.

In what has become the worst-kept secret on the internet, Giggs was named in Parliament yesterday as the professional footballer at the centre of a super-injunction row with Twitter.

The move leaves Britain’s privacy laws in chaos and calls into question the efficacy of using super-injunctions to gag the media in the internet age.

It also casts a shadow over a fine player in the twilight of a distinguished career.

Giggs is one of the most respected players in the Premier League. In a career lasting more than two decades, he has won countless admirers with the skill and attacking ability he has shown while playing for Manchester United and Wales.

So why become embroiled in a super-injunction row? Perhaps the answer lies earlier in his career when, at the height of his celebrity, he began a relationship with television presenter Dani Behr.

Giggs described the intense media scrutiny in his relationship as a turning point, and said: “Before I knew it, we were being photographed outside my house and cameramen followed us everywhere. It was very uncomfortable. At that point, I decided the celebrity lifestyle wasn’t for me.”

And he was as good as his word. The 37-yearold has been consistently admired for the way he has handled fame and coped with the pressures of top-flight football with professionalism and dignity.

HE made his debut aged 17 as a substitute against Everton, and two months later scored the winner against Manchester City at Old Trafford on his full debut.

Since then, winners’ medals have flowed into his collection, and he is still going strong – signing a one-year extension to his contract with United in February and picking up his 12th Premier League winners’ medal at the weekend.

But, as he acknowledged in the crowd’s plaudits at Old Trafford on Sunday, many fans already knew he was the player at the centre of a gagging row.

The super-injunction began to crumble last week when law firm Schillings launched proceedings against Twitter. If Giggs hoped the threat of legal action – and a two year jail sentence for breaching a privacy injunction – would keep the story out of the public eye, he was very much mistaken.

Within 24 hours of the legal action, 12,000 tweets naming the footballer had been posted.

At one point they appeared at the rate of one every five seconds.

When a Scottish newspaper decided to publish Giggs’ photograph across its front page on Sunday, because it was not bound by an English injunction, the law was finally laid low.

A row over a sportsman’s right to privacy had spiralled out of control and called into question the power of the super-injunction itself.

We’ve been here before, of course, and long before the internet.

When former MI5 officer Peter Wright tried to publish his book Spycatcher, the British Government acted to ban it. Since the ruling was obtained in an English court, however, the book continued to be available legally in Scotland, as well as overseas. Eventually, the book was given the green light for publication in England when the Law Lords acknowledged that widespread overseas distribution meant it no longer contained any secrets.

As Wikileaks has already proved, even Governments cannot keep a lid on state secrets in the internet age. The world wide web respects no boundaries.

So what happens now? David Cameron has already admitted the current situation is “unsustainable”.

A Parliamentary inquiry looks inevitable. David Cameron believes a beefedup Press Complaints Commission may be the answer, but how would the Press Complaints Commission square up to thousands of Twitter users prepared to break gagging orders?

Others believe the super-injunction fiasco makes a privacy law inevitable.

Was Ryan Giggs wrong to take on Twitter?

At least one expert believes he should have left well alone.

Nicholas Armstrong, a partner at law firm Charles Russell, summed it up: “For people in this situation, there’s a lot to be said for letting the storm blow out. It’s not always the best decision just to head to court. Like this, it can go viral.”

In a magazine interview last year, Giggs summed up life as he approached the end of his playing career: “I hardly drink any alcohol these days. I have taken up yoga, which is great. I just lead a more boring life.”

Sadly for him, and the law, thousands of Twitter users disagreed.