Accordingly, if there is any case for saying that Mr Mosley’s denials have, in any way, misled the public, and that the record should therefore be put straight for that reason, the objective can be achieved effectively without displaying the edited footage of bottoms being spanked. 33. The other “limiting factor” to be considered is whether the information contained in the edited footage has lost its privacy to the extent that there is nothing left for the law to protect. I have found this more difficult. I am prepared to accept that the material has been seen by thousands of people around the world and that it continues to be available. Mr Millar asks rhetorically, therefore, what can be achieved by an injunction in these circumstances? The Court must always be conscious of the practical realities and limitations as to what can be achieved. I have in mind, of course, what was said in Douglas v. Hello! at [105] (cited above). Nevertheless, a point may be reached where the information sought to be restricted, by an order of the Court, is so widely and generally accessible “in the public domain” that such an injunction would make no practical difference. 34. As Mr Millar has pointed out, if someone wishes to search on the Internet for the content of the edited footage, there are various ways to access it notwithstanding any order the Court may choose to make imposing limits on the content of the News of the World website. The Court should guard against slipping into playing the role of King Canute. Even though an order may be desirable for the protection of privacy, and may be made in accordance with the principles currently being applied by the courts, there may come a point where it would simply serve no useful purpose and would merely be characterised, in the traditional terminology, as a brutum fulmen. It is inappropriate for the Court to make vain gestures. 35. There is a closely related argument which needs also to be considered. It was addressed in Attorney-General v. Times Newspapers Ltd [2001] 1 WLR 885, 895-6, at [29]-[35]. The Court will sometimes recognise that it is inappropriate to restrain one media organisation from publishing material, for the vindication of the right of another person or pursuant to an obligation owed to that person, at a time when it is open to other media outlets, including competitors, to publish the selfsame information. That was an argument which carried weight in Attorney-General v. Times Newspapers. It is, however, a less convincing argument where the information was put into the public domain in the first place by the respondent sought to be restrained. In such circumstances, the argument would have about it what Mr Price calls a “bootstraps” quality; that is to say, because the respondent would be seeking to take advantage of its own “wrong” in having made the (hypothetically tortious) publication in the first place. 36. In the circumstances now prevailing, as disclosed in the evidence before me, I have come to the conclusion that the material is so widely accessible that an order in the terms sought would make very little practical difference. One may express this conclusion either by saying that Mr Mosley no longer has any reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of this now widely familiar material or that, even if he has, it has entered the public domain to the extent that there is, in practical terms, no longer anything which the law can protect. The dam has effectively burst. I have, with some reluctance, come to the conclusion that although this material is intrusive and demeaning, and despite the fact that there is no legitimate public interest in its further publication, the granting of an order against this Respondent at the present juncture

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