Five Years Ago

This week in 2011, we saw lots of critical digital issues being debated around the world. France was playing statistical games to claim that its HADOPI three strikes law was effective (it wasn't), even as it was having to temporarily suspend some operations following a data breach; Turkey was facing protests in response to a new plan for internet censorship; Pakistan was considering banning Facebook in the country; libraries in New Zealand were considering avoiding their own three strikes law by shutting off internet access; and in the UK, the courts were expanding superinjunction laws to cover social media and considering the Hargreaves report on the state of copyright.

In the US, we were digging into the PROTECT IP act, which was really all about old media going to war with the internet. As Google pointed out, it would set a disastrous precedent for free speech (which, of course, the big media companies tried to claim meant Google thought it was above the law). The International Trade Commission was using some silly methodology to amp up the damages of "piracy" in China, the RIAA was pushing for warrantless searches of CD and DVD manufacturing plants and trying to dig through the cloud for infringement.

Ten Years Ago

Five years earlier in 2006, we were happy to see the New York Times recognizing the amazing power of a digital library of scanned books, and also pointing out how great it can be for bringing attention to commercially neglected works. The RIAA was freaking out about the ability to record songs from satellite radio in a re-hash of the old "home taping is killing music" debacle, despite having sworn it would never be opposed to private, non-commercial recording. At least Australia was smart enough to realize that people should be allowed to rip their own CDs to their own iPods. Meanwhile, some were realizing that TV downloads could be a huge commercial opportunity for Hollywood, though they'd been trying to offer movies for years and the offerings still sucked. After all, how else could they keep making $200-million movies, right?

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2001, the biggest source of prediction and speculation was the future of wireless. One report noted that the real key to unlocking the wireless revolution was a killer app that everyone wanted, while MIT was focusing on the need for devices to improve, especially in terms of their displays (though small screens were probably going to do just fine for porn) and really trying to figure out exactly where the wireless web was at, and where it was going. We also saw an extremely smart, subtle prediction that has proven largely true: that consumer choices for wireless devices would start significantly influencing their choices for more traditional PC hardware and software (hello, Apple!)

Thirty-Six Years Ago

Since the latest Star Wars movie is still fresh in many people's minds, and since we even talked about its remix qualities earlier today in our Awesome Stuff post, it seems worth noting that it was on this day in 1980 that The Empire Strikes Back was released in cinemas. It's now widely considered to be the best of the original trilogy, and one of the best films in movie history.

This week, we're taking a break from gadgets and tech products to look at something right inside Techdirt's main wheelhouse: a pair of crowdfunded projects related to copyright, art and remix culture.

It wasn't enough that Creative Labs/Creative Technology spent March 24th suing almost every big name in the cell phone business for patent infringement. These lawsuits, all filed in the East Texas patent troll playground, asserted the same thing: that any smartphone containing a music app (which is every smartphone produced) violates the patent it was granted in 2005 to use in conjunction with its mp3 players. "Venue is proper" because smartphones are sold in Texas, even if the plaintiffs are located in California and Singapore, respectively.

That wasn't all Creative Technology did. It also filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission seeking to block the import of smartphones from manufacturers like Sony, LG, BlackBerry, Samsung, etc. under the theory that every imported phone contains patent-infringing software. The ITC has opened an investigation of Creative's allegations, which will at least hold off any potential import blocks until it reaches a decision. The ITC's summary of Creative's patent claims clearly shows how broad the patent's potential coverage is -- and (inadvertently) why it should be invalidated.

The products at issue in the investigation are portable electronic devices, such as smart phones, with the capability of playing stored media files selected by a user from a hierarchical display.

Creative Labs started its patent war early, suing Apple back in 2006 for "violating" its patent with its iPods. Apple ultimately settled with Creative for $100 million -- not only encouraging Creative's trolling ways but also moving Apple towards more aggressive acquisition (and defense) of patents, even for something truly obvious like "rounded corners."

Google has decided it's not going to wait around for the ITC or east Texas courts to come to the wrong conclusions. It's gone on the offensive, seeking declaratory judgment that it does not violate Creative's broad patent. Every company sued by Creative on March 24th sells Android phones that contain Google's "Play Music" app. On behalf of its customers (and its own Motorola Mobility, which was also sued), Google wants Creative's BS patent's power neutered.

No version of the Google Play Music app directly or indirectly infringes any claim of the ’433 patent. No third party infringes any claim of the ’433 patent by using the Google Play Music app in other devices. Google has not caused, directed, requested, or facilitated any such infringement, and has not had any specific intent to do so. The Google Play Music app is not designed for use in any combination that would infringe any claim of the ’433 patent. Rather, the Google Play Music app has substantial uses that do not infringe any claim of the ’433 patent.

[...]

An actual and justiciable controversy therefore exists between Google and Creative regarding whether the Google Play Music app infringes or has infringed the ’433 patent. A judicial declaration is necessary to determine the respective rights of the parties regarding the ’433 patent. Google seeks a judgment declaring that the Google Play Music app does not directly or indirectly infringe any claim of the ’433 patent.

Creative is asking for a substantial payout for something as obvious as selecting and adding songs to a playlist. The claim specified in its lawsuits is this one:

The method of selecting a track as recited in claim 1 wherein the accessing at least one track comprises selecting an item in the third display screen and adding at least one track associated with the selected item to a playlist.

If Google's receives a judgment in its favor, it will at least protect the cell phone manufacturers from having to deal with claims related to its "Music Play" app. For all of those that load their own music apps on their phones (which, again, is all of them), they're still on their own when it comes to fending off Creative's rent-seeking.

The market has changed and left Creative behind. Back when it sued Apple, it at least had a competing mp3 player on the market. Now, it has nothing even remotely related to smartphones, but still thinks it's entitled to a cut of those profits because it made music players once upon a time. And it's so desperate to leech off viable companies that it's willing to abuse more than a friendly district court to achieve its ends.

Many of you likely know about Glassdoor.com, which is a website used by both employers and propsective employees for recruiting, job applications and reviews of companies by former employees as to what it's like to work at a given company. As with any source of crowdsourced reviews, it is not without its pitfalls and controversy, but most of that has to do with different methods by which companies and former employees try to promote or slam a partricularly workplace with anonymous reviews. Anyone who has done job placement research, however, knows how valuable the site is.

Yet the use of anonymous reviews, as is typical of other sites, breeds discontent amongst some. Typically you will hear complaints from companies being reviewed negatively about these anonymous reviews being unfair, untrue, or ginned up by a limited number of ex-employees. That's usually the end of it. Occasionally, however, you get a company that wants to sue over reviews like this. California law firm Layfield & Barrett is apparently one such firm.

California trial attorney Philip Layfield, joined by his firm, has filed a defamation claim against 25 John Does over anonymous comments they left online about Layfield, his current firm of Layfield & Barrett, and his former firm of Layfield & Wallace. Our network of tipsters is mighty, and we’ve gotten our hands on a third-party subpoena served upon Glassdoor.com, a jobs and recruiting website, that allows users to post anonymous reviews of places they are current or former employees of, in order to provide an assessment of the working environment for job seekers. The subpoena seeks the identifying information of several users who have taken to this anonymous online forum to complain about their allegedly miserable work.

You can see the full subpoena below, but it does indeed seem that some of the reviews left for the firm were quite nasty. Titles for some of the posts include "Deceptive, Unethical, Poorly Managed, No Sense Of Direction," "Working Here is Psychological Torture," and my personal favorite "For the love of God, do NOT work here." One can understand why an employer would be unhappy about the existance of these reviews.

Suing over them, however, is likely to be as feeble as it is misguided. This is typically the part of the post where we talk first about the difficulty of suing successfully over these types of opinion-based reviews, move on to then talk about the importance of sites like Glassdoor.com honoring its users' anonymity, before finally coming around to explain that the Streisand Effect will now take hold of this whole thing, with the lawsuit serving mostly to catapult the negative opinions the firm disliked into the forefront of more people's minds than otherwise would have been. And that would usually be the end of the post.

That is not the end of this post, in part because Glassdoor has promised to fight the attempt to out its anonymous contributors, but even more so because Philip Layfield agreed to comment on the story for Above The Law, and Oh. My. God.

With respect to the lawsuit filed, here is the reality. Our law firm has approximately 150 employees and 35 attorneys. We demand the best of the best. Many people lie about their skills, their experience and their desire to be the best when the interview. We pay top dollar for candidates and many of our attorneys earn in excess of $1 million per year. When people are lazy or incompetent, they either quit because the writing is on the wall or they are terminated. Unfortunately, most of those people are unwilling to recognize their shortcomings and they turn to anonymous blogs to spit their venom. The reality is that they should be upset with their parents for raising lazy and incompetent young adults, but they choose to spew false information on blogs such as Glassdoor. The majority of these posts contain blatantly false information. We are going to obtain the identities of these cowards and bring them to justice.These people are going to have to answer for their conduct and we will shine a light on this very cowardly practice that has become an epidemic. People need to realize that just because you are sitting anonymously behind a keyboard, you can’t break the law. Ultimately, future employers will have to decide whether they want to employ people who post false and hateful information about former employers. The same way that Glassdoor operates as a hate forum for disgruntled employees, employers have a right to know information about job applicants.

Unfortunately, most employers are too busy to spend time posting negative information about former employees on job sites, although that would probably do a lot of good for society. For example, I would love to post information about employees who graduated law school, but can’t put two sentences together, or those that are sick at least one day every week.

We will not give any further comments until the case is over.

Imagine yourself for a moment as someone who was willing to give Layfield and his firm the benefit of the doubt thus far. Are you any longer? Probably not. This comment does nothing to verify the accuracy of the complaints at Glassdoor, but it does solidify them in the mind to some degree, does it not? In addition to the demeaning nature with which Layfield addresses his former employees, the aggrandizing tone with which he describes his own firm, and his silly labeling of Glassdoor as a hate forum, he does us all a service by outlining his desire to have employers act every bit as vindictively towards former employees as he complains about in reverse. That kind of delicious hypocrisy isn't in rare supply, of course, but that doesn't make it any less scrumptious to behold.

And, to the previous point, whatever Streisand-y Effect might have resulted from the legal action the firm had already taken will now be supercharged by this boorish comment at a well-read legal industry blog. And here at Techdirt. Any likely many other places as well. If the goal was to make the firm a more attractive place to work, it's difficult to think of a better strategy than this to achieve the opposite.

Modern farming is evolving yet again as technology makes growing crops more efficient with increasingly clever tricks. Maybe it's not such a good idea to mess with plant DNA to insert interspecies genes, but maybe there's no reason for increasing crop yields or produce quality, anyway. Biologists are messing around with gene expression pathways instead, so they don't need to change the DNA present -- just when or how the genes are (or aren't) activated. And better fertilizers could be on the way, too. Check out a few of these farming developments.

• There's a way to grow 50% more corn by taking advantage of a newly-discovered regulatory pathway in the plant that controls the stem cell growth of corn (and possibly other crops as well). The resulting ears of corn don't look all that pretty, but significantly more kernels per ear of corn increases crop yields without necessarily using more land or other resources. The researchers are still just exploring this new way to boost corn growth, and if you like eating corn on the cob -- these mutant ears of corn might make you lose your appetite. [url]
• Maybe you've never heard of the Haber-Bosch process, but it's essential for farming since it's been used to create fertilizer (ammonia from nitrogen gas) for about 100 years now. It's an energy intensive process, so the Department of Energy is looking for alternatives that are scalable, more sustainable and don't require fossil fuels. [url]
• Pesticides and GMO crops may be replaced with RNA interference sprays that can kill bugs or alter plant genetic expression. Genetic sprays wouldn't necessarily require GMO crops at all since a sprayed-on solution of RNA could effect desirable results without needing to change any plant DNA. Genes could be turned off at will with a spray, making plants more drought tolerant or poisoning insects by crippling their natural development. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Back in 2014, as the protests in Ferguson, Missouri were the main story everyone was following, we noted a troubling pattern of police in the area arresting journalists on no basis whatsoever. This happened even after a court told them to knock if off. And yet, the fallout from this is still happening. For reasons that still don't make any sense at all, prosecutors have charged two journalists -- Ryan Reilly and Wesley Lowery -- with trespassing, after they failed to leave a McDonald's fast enough (they were leaving, just apparently not fast enough).

Back in March, St. Louis County "accidentally" issued arrest warrants for the two of them: They eventually were told the warrants were issued in error, but it still shows how ridiculous this situation became. Finally, on Thursday, officials announced that they were dropping the charges against Reilly and Lowery, in exchange for a promise that the two will not sue the county.

Meanwhile, some other journalists who had been detained had already filed a lawsuit over the unlawful detention and, on Wednesdsay, it was announced that a settlement has been reached in which law enforcement officers will receive more training. While the official details of the settlement were "confidential," the Huffington Post got a copy of the settlement using a FOIA request and found some interesting details, including an agreement that none of the four journalists in question will "publicize" the agreement in any way:

Under the deal, Ryan Devereaux, Lukas Hermsmeier, Ansgar Graw and Frank Herrmann cannot “take any steps to publicize any of the terms” of the settlement. The agreement requires St. Louis County to pay $75,000 to resolve the federal civil rights lawsuit from the reporters, but like many settlements does not require the county to admit liability.

The agreement, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post through a public records request, will also require all officers with the police department to undergo mandatory in-service training on media access and the right to record police activity.

Of course, it shouldn't take a lawsuit for police to learn about the right of anyone (not just the press!) to record police activity. And, even though this information is getting out anyway, it seems pretty ridiculous that part of this settlement has this kind of gag order. These people are reporters. Their whole focus is on sharing and spreading information. It sounds like the St. Louis County Police Dept. must have really wanted to try to keep this settlement quiet... and now that's backfiring too. Maybe it should just stop trying to arrest and muzzle the press.

The nominative use doctrine allows third party references to trademark owners using the trademarks they chose as their preferred descriptors. Without a robust and well-functioning nominative use doctrine, trademark owners can have too much control over their brands -- they can shut down the advertisement of complementary or competitive offerings and potentially even critical scrutiny of the brands. Unfortunately, Congress never adopted a statutory nominative use doctrine for trademark infringement, and the doctrine seemingly baffles the courts. As a result, the circuits have created a patchwork of nominative use doctrines. A ruling this week from the Second Circuit exacerbated this problem.

The lawsuit itself is so ridiculous that it's hard to discuss with a straight face. The plaintiff owns the certification mark "CISSP" for certifying information security professionals. I've blogged about them before (1, 2). The defendant, Security University (SU), earned the CISSP designation and then ran ads self-referring to itself as "Master CISSP" or a "CISSP Master." When the certification mark owner challenged the "master" reference, the defendant responded "SU will continue to use the word Master. Master Clement Dupuis is a Male Teacher [and] thus he is a Master according to the dictionary." Oh come on, this is off the BS charts. Nevertheless, the district court dismissed the lawsuit because the defendant earned the CISSP certification and therefore could make a nominative use of it.

Trademark law isn't well-equipped to deal with an issue like this. The defendant's "master" usage implies the defendant has a superior knowledge compared to other CISSP. That's more of a false advertising issue than a trademark issue, and courts struggle when pressing trademark law to regulate broader advertising law issues. Furthermore, the way certified parties advertise themselves is best addressed by the terms of the certification, i.e., the certification should include restrictions on making superlative claims, forming combination marks or otherwise creating the impression that there are new certification flavors. I think contract principles, incorporated through the certification part of a certification mark, would be more efficacious than primary trademark doctrine.

Still, this case presented itself as a trademark case to the courts, so they address it using the tools of trademark. The Second Circuit reverses the district court's nominative use determination, remanding the case back to the district court to apply the legal principles it lays out in the opinion.

Regarding the nominative use doctrine, the court makes two major moves. First, the court could have adopted the legal articulation used by other circuits, such as this venerable language from the Ninth Circuit's New Kids on the Block case from a quarter-century ago:

First, the product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; second, only so much of the mark or marks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service; and third, the user must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder.

Instead, the court chose to re-articulate the doctrine in its own words:

(1) whether the use of the plaintiff's mark is necessary to describe both the plaintiff's product or service and the defendant's product or service, that is, whether the product or service is not readily identifiable without use of the mark; (2) whether the defendant uses only so much of the plaintiff's mark as is necessary to identify the product or service; and (3) whether the defendant did anything that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the plaintiff holder, that is, whether the defendant's conduct or language reflects the true or accurate relationship between plaintiff's and defendant's products or services.

You can see similarities to the Ninth Circuit test, but notice the differences. The Second Circuit's first factor requires a "necessity" of the trademark reference, a seemingly higher bar than the Ninth Circuit's "not readily identifiable" requirement (a phrase which nevertheless confusingly modifies the word "necessary"). In the second factor, the Second Circuit omits the "reasonably" qualifier from the identification necessity. In the third factor, the Second Circuit requires that the description be "accurate."

All told, the Second Circuit's modifications make it just a little harder for defendants to qualify for the nominative use case. Why did the Second Circuit toughen up the nominative use standard compared to the Ninth Circuit? The court provides no explanation, but I suspect it's an overreaction to the defendant playing semantic games ("bad facts make bad law," etc.), plus the overall misfit of using trademark law to govern what's really a false advertising issue.

Second, the Second Circuit addresses when a court should do its nominative use analysis. In the Ninth Circuit, the three-factor nominative use test substitutes for the standard multi-factor likelihood of consumer confusion test. In the Third Circuit, nominative use is an affirmative defense. Rejecting both approaches, the Second Circuit says that, "in nominative use cases," judges should add the three nominative use factors to the standard eight-factor Polaroid consumer confusion test -- in other words, an overlong eight-factor test now becomes an even longer 11-factor test. Any ideas how that's going to work out? (Recall Judge Walker's cogent and pithy critique: "Every circuit uses some n-factor test for likelihood of confusion, where n is an integer that is almost certainly too large for the task at hand").

By adding factors to the multi-factor test, the court makes it effectively impossible for defendants to establish nominative use on a motion to dismiss (a possibility under the Ninth Circuit's approach, even if unlikely), and it will inhibit judges from ruling for the defense on summary judgment. Judges can resolve consumer confusion analyses on summary judgment, but some judges are reluctant to do so because the factors encode so many factual questions. Adding three more factors to the test, each with additional factual predicates, will make judges that much more reluctant. So the court's ruling implicitly adds to the costs of a successful nominative use defense.

As I mentioned before, courts can't figure out how to deal with the nominative use doctrine. This is a problem because the nominative use doctrine plays a critical role in the successful functioning of markets, something I emphasized in my 2005 Deregulating Relevancy article. To facilitate socially beneficial nominative uses, we need doctrinal and procedural fastlanes that provide certainty and cheap resolutions to secondary users. The Second Circuit decision moves us further away from that direction.

A nomenclature note: there is some disagreement about whether to call the doctrine "nominative use" or "nominative fair use." The Second Circuit opinion uses the term interchangeably but seems to prefer "nominative fair use" -- that gets 34 references in the opinion, compared to 11 for "nominative use."

Reposted from the Technology & Marketing Law Blog

Techdirt has written many times about the way in which copyright only ever seems to get stronger, and how different jurisdictions point to other examples of excessive copyright to justify making their own just as bad. In Chile, there's an interesting example of that kind of copyright ratchet being applied in the same country but to different domains. It concerns audiovisual works, and aims to give directors, screenwriters and others new rights to "match" those that others enjoy. Techdirt has already written about this bad idea in the context of the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances. But it turns out that Chile's proposed copyright legislation adds an extra twist that makes it even worse, because these rights will be unwaivable -- an approach we've seen before in Portugal. Here's what that will mean in practice, as explained on infojustice.org by Luis Villarroel, from the Chilean organization Innovarte:

the music composer of a work embedded in any audiovisual work, the writer of the drama, the Director, the camera man, etc, will not be able to waive their rights or license for free through a creative commons license or any other open licenses, or give works to the public domain.

To make it worse, because of the national treatment obligations this bill will also apply to foreign audiovisual works.

According to Villarroel, the legislation is being promoted by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers -- and by Chilean collecting societies. By an amazing coincidence, the new licensing fees will all be administered by the latter. Villarroel first wrote about this move last year, when the legislation was approved in Chile's House of Representatives. Despite the delay, it is apparently back on the agenda, and will be considered by the Senate, the country's upper house, soon.

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Anyone who has spent time with us here at Techdirt will be familiar with Voltage Pictures, the movie studio that perhaps is more famous now for being a copyright settlement troll than it is for having produced the movie Dallas Buyers Club. The studio has quite the reputation for sending settlement letters to those it accuses of having pirated the movie, typically with offers to settle for amounts in the thousands, and armed with the evidence of an IP address and nothing else. The frightened masses too often fork over the demanded settlement, not realizing that having an IP address is not evidence enough to prove guilt. It's a bullying business model that drips of sleaze.

But, like with many others that use sleazy business models, the sleaze doesn't end there. Lying and making false promises appears to be part of the model as well. Take the case of Michael Amhari, a California man on the receiving end of one of Voltage's settlement offers. The studio made several promises to try to get Amhari to settle, none of which it appears to have been willing to keep. For instance, Voltage wanted Amhari to take a polygraph to back up his claim that he wasn't the one who downloaded the film.

“Plaintiff demanded that defendant take a polygraph examination in exchange for a dismissal of the case. Plaintiff’s counsel disingenuously stated that he would bear all the costs for such a polygraph test,” Amhari’s counsel Clay Renick writes.

“When plaintiff’s counsel then agreed to take such a test with the proviso that defense costs and attorney fees be covered, plaintiff then refused to pay costs and revoked his offer to conduct a polygraph.”

Instead of coming to terms, Dallas Buyers Club asked the court to order a default judgment in their favor, which Amhari’s counsel asked the court to set aside.

In addition to playing these games with a polygraph test request, Renick is also asking the court to set aside the judgement due to all the other promises Voltage made to Amhari, with promises to dismiss its claim, that it didn't keep.

For example, they offered to dismiss the case if he would state under penalty of perjury that he was not involved, while pointing out another possible suspect. However, after Amhari submitted his declaration they moved for a default anyway.

“After receiving exculpatory evidence and the sworn declaration of defendant, Mr. Davis then refused to file a dismissal and proceeded to demand that defendant appear in the action or he would file a default. This behavior is galling and it should not be permitted by the court,” the defendant’s counsel adds.

Galling and quite exemplary of just how interested in any kind of justice Voltage Pictures is in this instance. Which is to say it isn't at all, because it appears to keep requesting information and evidence supporting Amhari's innocence and then rescinding its promises once its requests are met. That isn't someone looking for a just result. It's instead the actions of an incredibly irritating bully who is only interested in the extraction of money from someone it deems to be be bully-able. That the promises were backed by a legal staff that then has gone back to the court to try to get judgments against the defendant is breathtakingly cavalier.

Given that Amhari has agreed to pretty much every demand that Voltage Pictures has made, and has received none of the promised results, it would be nice for the court to slap the troll around a bit and at least revoke the previous default judgement.

For years we've written about the troubling practice in the UK of so-called super injunctions, which bar the press from discussing certain topics. It seems that these super injunctions are most frequently used to stop any discussion in the media of embarrassing situations involving the rich and famous. Of course, social media -- and Twitter in particular -- have become a real challenge to making those super injunctions have any meaning at all.

Apparently, one such super injunction was recently granted to a "celebrity couple" who added a third person to add a "trois" to the "menage." The threesome doesn't want their extracurricular activities to be discussed publicly, and the courts have obliged, with the UK Supreme Court upholding the super injunction, while the UK's the Sun on Sunday tabloid sought to break the media gag order. I'm not exactly a fan of media reporting on the personal activities of what celebrities do in their bedrooms, but it still seems troubling to have courts completely bar the media from discussing the situation at all (they can discuss that the super injunction exists, but not much beyond that).

But, again, there's social media. So it seemed doubly odd that people who had been tweeting about the "celebrity threesome" started receiving emails from the Twitter legal department alerting them that they may wish to be cautious about tweeting such things.

An email from Twitter’s legal team, seen by the Guardian, does not explicitly ask users to delete the tweets but hints that there could be consequences for not doing so.

The email reads: “The complainant requests that the following tweet, allegedly in violation of local law in the UK, be removed immediately from your account. Please confirm whether you will voluntarily comply with the request.”

It also includes a reminder that Twitter’s rules require that users “comply with all local laws regarding their online conduct and acceptable content”.

From that, it actually appears that lawyers for at least someone involved in the threesome reached out to Twitter to complain about specific tweets and argued that the super injunction applied there as well. Of course, the super injunction applies to media, which raises the question of whether or not random Twitter users qualify as "media." At the very least, the Attorney General for England and Wales is similarly warning that even those tweeting the names may be prosecuted:

The attorney-general has warned Twitter and Facebook users may face prosecution if they name the celebrity at the centre of a privacy injuction banning the reporting of his alleged extramarital activities.

Jeremy Wright QC said in a statement that anyone who breached the order, not just newspapers, could have contempt of court proceedings brought against them.

So, perhaps the email from Twitter was just trying to protect its UK userbase from facing such legal actions.

Still, it appears the lawyers trying to silence these details are going after anything online they dislike. Last month they claimed that a random blogger violated the super injunction as well, and have also sought to use Europe's "right to be forgotten" rules to remove search references as well.

Of course, all this activity seems to only be fueling even more interest on social media in leading people to figure out who the suspected celebrities are. Apparently tabloid publications outside of the UK have freely published the details of the story, so it's not like anyone in the UK has to look very hard to find the details, and that was one of the arguments used against allowing the super injunction to continue -- but apparently the Supreme Court was not convinced. Either way, even if Twitter argues it's doing this to protect its users from possible charges (as ridiculous as those might be), there does seem to be something quite troubling when a company like Twitter is basically telling people to "watch what they say" for fear of potential legal consequences.