IT had been a hell of a week for one of Manchester United’s most celebrated players, Ryan Giggs. Hitherto often portrayed as a family man, Giggs had earlier obtained a super injunction to keep his alleged six-month extra-marital affair with 28-year-old reality TV star Imogen Thomas secret. Of course, last week saw it become the world’s most revealed secret.
With the super injunction in force, neither Thomas nor the media could reveal or even mention the Premier League star’s name. (A super injunction is a temporary injunction which restrains a person from publishing private or confidential information concerning the applicant or informing others of the existence of such injunction and the courtproceedings.)
But this had not impressed the Wild West of social media because by May 21, tens of thousands of Twitter users had already tweeted and re-tweeted Giggs’ name.This is by far the biggest act of mass civil disobedience onthe Internet, making a mockery of the court order.
Needless to say, Britain’s feral and sanctimonious media were not amused at all, as it did not make sense to them that they could still be gagged from publishing something which is already an open secret on Twitter.
Even British Prime Minister David Cameron weighed in, describing the privacy law of Britain as no longer sustainable in this age of social media since everybodyalready knew the footballer’sidentity.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/5/29/focus/8781291&sec=focus
