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Twitter won't be 'too concerned' says lawyer of super injunction footballer's legal case

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

May 20, 2011 | 3 min read

Twitter is unlikely to be too concerned over reports that a married footballer who took out a super injunction to prevent him being named for an affair with former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas, says a legal expert.

The original injunction was taken out to prevent The Sun from revealing his identity, but this has not prevented thousands of Twitter users from openly discussing his name online.

The married player has now initiated legal proceedings against Twitter, a US based company, and "persons unknown" in what commentators expect to become a landmark case.

The player was one of a number of celebrities identified by an anonymous user on Twitter earlier this month as having obtained super-injunctions . The list of celebrities has since been forwarded to an estimated 2 million people.

Paul Jonson who heads up Manchester legal firm Pannone’s dispute resolution group said that the legal action against Twitter would be ‘very difficult’ and unlikely to concern the social networking site.

“Ultimately the company is headquartered in the US which is very much pro-free speech generally and has also been very critical of UK defamation laws and has refused to enforce UK defamation which it believes it too strict and anti-freedom of press,” explained Jonson.

“The US is also very against censoring cyberspace and freedom of expression,” he continued.

“Another interesting angle will be how do they plan on proving that Twitter is responsible for these people’s postings and whether they really expect Twitter to monitor and police all of these tweets.

“The US has a very different philosophy and I doubt whether the US courts will allow Twitter to be sued and I don’t think they will be too concerned,” he concluded.

Yesterday a report revealed that only two new super injunctions had been taken out since 2010.

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