Fair enough, we now know why the personal details of the mother and one of the males were withheld – because back in November the case involving the sister of baby Peter was being organised and it was necessary to have a jury who knew nothing about the mother and boyfriend or details about ‘Baby P’ at the time. It was a new trial regarding different charges.

By this stage the horses had bolted regarding the online vigilanties; with no internet there would have been no problem withholding details – but I think applying the old media targeted reporting restrictions rules to the internet was madness. Two completely different mediums; one can be controlled the other – impossible…

Laws in this regard need to be adapted to take the online world into account – if you are a professional hack then you would have received notice of reporting restrictions, online bloggers etc get no such notice and assume such rules do not apply to them.

I am sure though that if it was made known – in some way – that the anonymity thing was in place in November because a new trial involved a sibling then maybe it would have been respected. The online community simply saw it as protecting the criminals in this case.

That situation is probably viable in cases along the lines of “Joe is accused of pinching an apple” but, these days, not really a runner in high profile cases and particularly those where there’d be an international interest. Certainly in the past one could have looked up details in the newspapers held in one’s local library which gets an exemption from the contempt of court. Yet, apparently, looking up the very same newspaper archive online would mean that the paper would be in contempt. That’s even before you consider the various places that information is cached these days.

For example, our own http://www.CulturedViews.com had (now deleted) information about the case. Even though we have deleted it’s still available to the world courtesy of google et al caching.

For that matter, surely a Sky+ box could be in contempt if one had recorded some news programmes from a while back on the case? After all, one can attach a gadget to it which allows it to broadcast throughout the home ie it has a publishing capability.

Perhaps the best approach would be to only publish one’s blog in America where at least there’d be a first amendment protection (which, apparently, provided our site with some protection as the registrar refused to take it down).

My argument is that we should have systems in place for educating people who haven’t read, or been trained in media law (which journalists should have been), so they can see where they would be in breach of Contempt of Court legislation.

The quote you attribute to me was from someone else’s blog, and not my own words.

Note: we had to delete your second comment – the details it contained would have been in Contempt of Court under UK law.

Otherwise the people have an absolute right to know and the courts are acting in contempt of the people. The public have a total right to know.

If you really want to know it is not too difficult to find out.

If you want to publish it then you can expect it to be taken down. Most news & community sites have voluntarily done this without even been asked.

The latter is important in frustrating vigilante action. Free publication can only do harm in this case. It is a fudge and one that should be welcomed. The internet has given us the protection that much can no longer be kept secret. Making them a bit difficult to find is a good price to pay to stop this good advance coming at too great a cost by irresponsible exploitation.