Oil platform Cairn Energy Stena Don. Photo: Will Rose/GreenpeaceAttempt of Scottish oil company to stop Greenpeace activists tweeting about a protest and posting pictures of people dressed as polar bears on the internet has backfired with hundreds of people around the world breaking the injunction on behalf of the Group of the environment.
Is the first such injunction to be issued since the line in May about the disrespect of super-injunctions made by celebrities by Twitter users.
Cairn Energy, the company now explore oil and gas off the coast of Greenland, was granted an interim injunction on Monday after 17 people, some dressed as polar bears, entered his headquarters of Edinburgh and staged a sit-in, demanding a copy of the plan of the company's oil spill response drill in the Arctic.
Scottish court order prohibits the group environment "disclosure, printing, uploading, sharing, copying, or otherwise publishing any images, photographs, images or other material (or copies) taken or recorded by Greenpeace activists present within 50 Lothian Road, Edinburgh in or on July 18, 2011."
A Greenpeace spokesman, said: "we had to exclude certain tweets. The injunction says ' any material or images taken within the offices of the Cairn must be excluded '. This means that all blogposts and tweets made during the protest has to come down and all images sent by nodes removed. Already had to warn the picture desks around the world. "
But hundreds of people began to post the photos in your personal accounts from Facebook and Twitter.
Spread of photographs of Greenpeace demonstrators dressed as polar bears on Twitter and social media sites could give rise to a new challenge to the system of courts of injunctions, lawyers have warned.
"If people start tweeting and put the photos on Facebook they could be despite the Scottish courts," said Jennifer McDermott, head of media and public law, the lawyers of London Withers LLP.
"I think they are concerned that any pictures taken can show pictures of employees or confidential documents. The protesters can come back and defy the injunction. It is just a provisional measure.
"But if you go to someone's private property is difficult to get it lifted," McDermott, who was involved in the Spycatcher case in late 1980. "They appeared at the Criminal Court of a sheriff.
"I'm surprised that lawyers of Cairns are not getting an injunction in [England], but if you know about an injunction and try and defy ... [that] be in contempt of the Scottish courts. "
If the injunction could be enforced abroad is questionable. The same problem arose during the line on privacy superinjunctions this summer where names of celebrities and football players from the Premier League have circulated across the internet in the face of mounting legal frustration and Twitter.
The attempt to avoid using social media to report the Greenpeace protest has echoes of the case of Ryan Giggs, when thousands of people broke an injunction super. Blanket order of Cairn is believed to be the first time any group has been told to retract posts and photos.
Greenpeace on Tuesday claimed that was being gagged. "Cairn Energy is using its legal muscle to try to gag and tell us the truth about his dangerous oil drilling in the Arctic environment fragile," said Executive Director of Greenpeace, John Sauven. "The company is clearly concerned that our volunteers may have got their hands on your secret spills Arctic response documents and now they are determined to continue its cover up by any means which can – even if it means interfering in important freedoms of expression."
"Cairn bosses can use their expensive lawyers to try to shut down our peaceful protests by using cooling legal maneuvers, but we will continue to campaign to protect the Arctic from reckless corporations who see the melting of polar ice as a business opportunity."
A Cairn spokesman said: "aim of the Cairn is not in any way, shape or form to terminate or ' gag ' debate – in fact we went on the record about clear right of people to protest for two years now. The step taken was to protect confidential information that Greenpeace people have or may have accessed during an eight-hour occupation around the offices. This is a duty to all kinds of people, including employees, partners and shareholders. Of course let's not act where no justified. "
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