Twitter Prepared To Name Users

whoever57 writes "Ryan Gibbs, a UK footballer (soccer player) had obtained a 'superinjunction' that prevented him being named as the person involved in an affair with a minor celebrity. However, he was named by various users on Twitter. Now, in response to legal action initiated by Mr. Giggs in the UK courts against the users, Twitter has stated that it is prepared to identify the users who broke the injunction if it was 'legally required' to do so. Twitter will attempt to notify the users first in order to give them an opportunity to exercise their rights."

This is dumb

[Squiddie]

This is retarded on a single point. How can they break the injunction if it wasn't directly filed against them. It's not as if all Twitter users work there.

Re:This is dumb

[Inda]

This is the argument I've been using against the BBC when they've been removing my posts.

How am I, Joe Public, supposed to know this super-injuction even exists?

Unless I'm told that mentioning Ryan Giggs is off-limits, how am I to know? I'm not a news organisation, I'm not a journalist, I don't work in the courts, I can't even attend the hearing.

My name is Joe Public and I broke the super-injuction. Lock me up for two years... if you can catch me copper!

Re:Maybe the Twits should apply for a super-injunc

[ledow]

P.S. Next time keep it in your pants, and you won't have a problem, Ryan.

Re:wrong name

[Neil Boekend]

To be able to comply with the injunctions one should know about them.
If they want the whole country to comply they should tell everyone.
Assuming the injunction is against telling people that "Mr Giggs is fucking a minor celebrity" they would have to tell everyone.
This has made the injunction useless, because now they have told everyone themselves.
It's more of an advanced public secret.

Re:Maybe the Twits should apply for a super-injunc

[c]

I agree but what I'd add is that Twitter should be absolutely lambasted
for agreeing to hand over the names as that's what really stinks in this scenario.

The qualifier is "... if legally required". Hate to break it to you, but there's darn near no corporation on the planet which will outright refuse to do something if they're clearly legally required, especially if compliance is cheap. The ones with balls will refuse to do things they're not legally obligated to do, and a few will even refuse to do things which fall into legal grey areas, but otherwise they'll do it. I this case, Twitter hasn't actually done anything except, maybe, compile that list just to ensure they know they could do it if they were asked properly.

Now, that being said, it stands to reason that Twitter will probably ignore any legal requests from inapplicable jurisdictions. This may or may not include the UK. They may also contest requests where they think they might have a strong legal backing (i.e. privacy laws).

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