Mosley takes a proper spanking
(He won't enjoy this one)
FORMER Formula 1 chief Max Mosley was left licking his wounds yesterday after losing a £30,000 bid to gag the Press.
The 71-year-old — furious after being caught at an S&M orgy with five prostitutes — demanded the European Court of Human Rights bring in new legislation to stop people being exposed.He wanted media outlets to be forced to contact the subject of any investigation before a word is published so they would have time to get an injunction and stop the truth from coming out.
Mr Mosley said if "prior notification" had been required at the time of the News of the World's S&M story he would have "undoubtedly" got an injunction to halt publication and protect his private life.
But seven judges from the Strasbourg court rejected his demand saying it could have a "chilling effect" on a free Press. They ruled the right to freedom of expression would be at risk if "pre-notification" was compulsory.
And they said Mosley — who headed motor sport's governing body the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile until 2009 — had failed to find "a single jurisdiction" in Europe where papers had to contact people before writing about them.
Mr Mosley later said he would "look very seriously" at appealing to the Grand Chamber of Europe. But his court battle has already cost him £30,000 in legal fees.
He went to Strasbourg after the UK High Court awarded him £60,000 in 2008 over the News of the World's spanking story. The paper suggested the activities had "Nazi overtones" — something dismissed by the court.
Quentin Bargate, of London law firm Bargate Murray, said: "Twitter pages have been buzzing like honey bees with today's news confirming that Max Mosley has not been successful with his case.
"The question now arises whether this case represents a moment when the tide has turned against privacy and in favour of investigative journalism: will the human rights judgment speed up the demise of celebrity super injunctions, or accelerate the need for a fully formed privacy law?"
John Kampfner, chief executive of Index on Censorship, said: "The issue at stake here was not the sex lives of celebrities. Serious investigative journalism would have suffered.
We are pleased that the court acknowledged that Mr Mosley's move would have inflicted a significant chilling effect on the media."
Roar of free speech has just got louder
By TREVOR KAVANAGH
YOU don't need to be a tabloid journalist to celebrate orgy-loving Max Mosley's crushing defeat by the European Courts.
Lost cause ... Mosley failed in his bid to change privacy laws
You simply need to believe in the hard-won human right to free speech, free expression and a free Press.
Had Mosley won his case, the British media would have been bound, trussed and gagged.
We would have been subject to the most draconian Press regulation in the free world.
Instead, the ECHR came up, for once, with the right answer.
It ruled that any constraint on publication would have had a "chilling" effect on the media's ability to unearth the corruption that corrodes every society.
Mr Mosley represents the smug elite who see themselves as above the law, remote from the "great unwashed".
He demanded advance warning for anyone caught red-handed in private misconduct so they could use the law to stop the presses.
His real aim was to stop us ever knowing about sordid activities like his own grubby outing with five whip-wielding whores.
He sued the News Of The World not because they got the facts wrong but because they claimed the orders he barked in cod German had a Nazi flavour.
Mr Mosley seemed especially sensitive because his father, the infamous Sir Oswald Mosley, was vilified as a Hitler-supporting fascist.
That's his problem.
But it should not — and, thanks to the ECHR, will not — stop the media exposing married hypocrites like him.
But even as the court handed down its verdict, the law was being overtaken by the Twitter revolution.
Astonishingly powerful new technology has already brought down Arab tyrants.
Now it threatens to destroy superstar super-injunctions.
Rich bankers, footballers and showbiz stars may assume they are above the decent codes of conduct that govern the rest of us. They bask in public esteem, while privately jumping into bed with any passing hooker, secretary or groupie.
They can, for a mere 50 grand — two years' wages to the average worker — obliterate all UK publicity about their seedy romps. In some cases, they can gag the entire world, including America where free speech is enshrined in the US Constitution.
But their time is up.
Twitter threatens to put their spurious claims into the open.
The super-gags are in danger of being rendered useless as names are bandied about on social networks.
BBC star Andrew Marr was the first to ditch his own super-injunction over an affair with a fellow journalist. There are plenty more who have used their wealth to gag the media.
Those with any sense will now do the decent thing, abandon their high-handed court actions, show some humility and emerge in public.
Before they are dragged into the spotlight as the hypocrites they really are.
