Yesterday the reviled British libel firm Carter-Ruck managed to place an injuction on the Guardian (UK newspaper) to prevent it from reporting details of questions an MP had asked in Parliament. This was an unprecedented form of censorship, as normally everything said in Parliament is recorded for posterity in an official record called the Hansard, and can be freely reported in the press. In fact, getting an MP to say something in Parliament has occasionally been used as a way to get censored material into the public record in the face of litigation.
Last night there was quite a bit of of debate here on Kos about the injunction. Today I can happily report that the injuction was lifted--and bloggers and Twitterers are the reason!
The Guardian reports here that:
The Commons question reveals that Trafigura has obtained a hitherto secret injunction, known as a "super-injunction", to prevent disclosures about toxic oil waste it arranged to be dumped in west Africa in 2006, making thousands of people ill.
This information is contained in the "Minton report," originally commissioned by the oil company itself. The Guardian is still subject to a regular injunction about some details of the case, which you can find out more about here.
Overnight people using Twitter spread details of the case and the address of leaked information about it on Wikileaks. These details were also carried by the popular right-wing blog Order-Order, left wing blog Ministry of Truth, and many other British blogs, both left and right.
I consider this a good example of the power of the electronic press in a time of increased censorship via court injunction. Discuss...