BBC

Stand up to Trafigura abuse of outdated libel laws

by kierenmccarthy on December 16, 2009

In October, there was outrage when UK libel lawyers Carter-Ruck prevented a newspaper from repeating questions asked in Parliament. The issue was regarding the lawyers’ client, Trafigura, which several media outlets including The Guardian and the BBC reported had dumped toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, leading to many deaths and other health issues.

Trafigura took a very aggressive stance, using the UK’s outdated libel laws to gag the media, and questions in Parliament. When the Guardian reported that it had been served with a “super-injunction” that didn’t allow it to name Trafigura, or Carter-Ruck, *or* the fact that they had taken out an injunction on them, the Internet took up the case and plastered the details everywhere. Twitter in particular came into play.

That moment was hailed as a victory of the Internet over efforts to clamp down on free speech and comment, but Trafigura and Carter-Ruck simply bided their time and have again launched into an aggressive clampdown, this time removing an article from the BBC website that covered its Newsnight investigation.

And so, people on the Internet are again picking up the baton and posting the information online, including a video of the Newsnight programme that covered Trafigura and its toxic waste dumping scandal. It is posted above. Presumably, Trafigura will now direct Carter-Ruck to take action against YouTube, at which point I am sure this will take another turn around the roundabout. Hopefully until Trafigura’s learns a valuable lesson.

I would encourage any bloggers or twitterers out there to disseminate this information.

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What did all the idiots do before the Internet?

by kierenmccarthy on January 22, 2009

The Internet and email are wonderful things most of the time. But the dreadful simplicity of this form of communication has some downsides – most significantly in that it allows people’s idiotic thoughts to be transmitted beyond themselves.

Everyone has idiotic thoughts. Some people have many more than others. And mostly you control them; keep them safe until you’ve checked them internally. Some people however have so many stupid ideas in their head that they can’t help but leak out. These are the people that most love the Internet.

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Popularity: 8% [?]

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Diana crash pic and strange self-censorship

July 14, 2006

[I'm getting a lot of hits on this page because of the recent report from John Stevens, out on 14 December 2006. It was a three-year investigation directly into the question over whether Diana's death was a conspiracy. He concluded firmly that Diana's death was no more than a "tragic accident". You can download the short version of the report, or the longer version (800+ pages) from this site by following the links.]

The Internet’s not what it used to be. I heard this morning that some Italian magazine called Chi had printed a picture of Princess Diana, dead, sat in the car that killed her in Paris way back in 1997. After dinner, I thought I’d find it, and, incredibly, it’s taken me an hour.

Of course, the British tabloids have leapt on the picture, bellowing with outrage. This is just shameless profiteering. Every editor knows that [tag]Diana[/tag] stories sell papers – Richard Desmond has turned over an entire newspaper, The Daily Express, to this peculiar business model, running endless and pointless front-page headlines over Diana.

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