Carter: Rucked.
Oct. 13th, 2009 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andygatesSocial media compares well to a pub: it's vaguely compartmentalised and mostly public, a hubbub of conversation that ebbs and flows. Sometimes, one of the barflies says something so dumb that the jukebox skips, the bar goes silent, and then there's a roar before he's thrown out into the street.
That's what just happened to Carter Ruck, the scumbag-protecting lawyers who put a gagging order on the Guardian preventing them from reporting a parliamentary question, who was asking it, what it was about, when it would be asked, and so on. But the scandalous gagging was reported, got onto Twitter, and that's when the roar started.
So Carter Ruck managed to bring the full glare of the Streissand Effect down on their clients like an arc-lamp. And they are skeezy clients, too: toxic dumpers Trafigura. We know that, because the paperwork was lurking up on Wikileaks and St Stephen of Fry, tapping his jillion followers for all they're worth, tweeted it out.
The legals have caved in and dropped it. The angry tweeting mob are turning on the Justice Minister to use this to ensure that all proceedings are protected from this sort of rubbish.
Gag the fourth estate and the fifth just get louder.
This is the good side of the death of privacy: the death of the abuse of smoke-filled rooms and private chambers. Panopticon, baby. We're watching.
That's what just happened to Carter Ruck, the scumbag-protecting lawyers who put a gagging order on the Guardian preventing them from reporting a parliamentary question, who was asking it, what it was about, when it would be asked, and so on. But the scandalous gagging was reported, got onto Twitter, and that's when the roar started.
So Carter Ruck managed to bring the full glare of the Streissand Effect down on their clients like an arc-lamp. And they are skeezy clients, too: toxic dumpers Trafigura. We know that, because the paperwork was lurking up on Wikileaks and St Stephen of Fry, tapping his jillion followers for all they're worth, tweeted it out.
The legals have caved in and dropped it. The angry tweeting mob are turning on the Justice Minister to use this to ensure that all proceedings are protected from this sort of rubbish.
Gag the fourth estate and the fifth just get louder.
This is the good side of the death of privacy: the death of the abuse of smoke-filled rooms and private chambers. Panopticon, baby. We're watching.
