The Supreme Court will hear argument as to whether permission to appeal should be granted, and, if it is granted, as to whether the appeal should be allowed or dismissed. The interim injunction granted by the Court of Appeal will remain in place until the conclusion of the Supreme Court hearing, and at the end of the hearing the Supreme Court will decide whether to continue that injunction. Until then…

In his judgement Lord Justice Jackson effectively ruled that injunctions cannot remain in place once knowledge of the injucted information is widespread:

“The court should not make orders which are ineffective. It is inappropriate – some may used a stronger term – for the court to ban people from saying that which is common knowledge… Knowledge of the relevant matters is now so widespread that confidentiality has probably been lost”

Google search trends show that searches for “David Furnish” in the UK have increased to a trend score of 100 in the last few days, the maximum possible score relative to previous searches for his name:

Searches for “Daniel Laurence”, the man who claims he had an olive oil paddling pool threesome with Furnish, have also increased to a score of 100:

This data shows just those who already knew to search those specific names. Several times as many people will have discovered the identities simply by searching “celebrity injunction”:

Carter Ruck’s attempts to threaten Google into taking down search results revealing the identities failed completely. As Lord Justice Jackson says, knowledge has become widespread…

The injunction has been lifted but the names can not yet be published pending appeal. The gagging order remains in place until Wednesday 1pm…

UPDATE: The judge adds:

“The court should not make orders which are ineffective. It is inappropriate for the court to ban people from saying that which is common knowledge. Knowledge of the relevant matters is now so widespread that confidentiality has probably been lost.”

Read Lord Justice Jackson on the futility of injunctions here.

See also: Lawyers Only People Enjoying Threesome, Now David Furnish and Elton John Threaten Google

Yesterday Guido gave an interview* to the Irish Times about the Celebrity Threesome Injunction. Lawyers Carter Ruck claim this article and others, despite being typed and uploaded in Ireland to be hosted on servers in the United States protected by the First Amendment, breaches their injunction covering England and Wales.

The injunction is incredibly restrictive; it not only prohibits reporting the facts of the matter, it prohibits linking to the story, identifying the National Enquirer or this site in any way. Which is why the British press is referring to a mystery “top blogger” and Google has been forced to remove links to our articles. The Irish Times however identifies the “top blogger”, names this website and even handily gives the headline to cut and paste into Google to easily find the censored article. Not really a legal issue for a foreign printed publication.

However as the photo above shows, the international edition of the Irish Times was freely available in London. It is printed at the Newsfax plant in Hackney…

*The article is no longer on the Irish Times website, it has been copied from the Google cache and is reproduced in full in the comments below.

Guido noticed an overnight drop in traffic to this website. Google search results were not sending as many referrals as we have been seeing recently. It appears Carter-Ruck have threatened Google for being in breach of the ridiculous injunction obtained by Elton’s husband David Furnish in relation to the so-called “celebrity threesome” case. Not entirely unexpected. Still not going to work, though Guido reserves the right to counter-sue for loss of earnings…

Tomorrow, behind a closed door – so much for open justice – an appeal hearing is set to be held where The Sun will ask judges to deliberate whether to free the media to report the case or continue to censor their identities. David Furnish and Elton John argue that they want to spare their children embarrassment. Should have thought of that before stripping down and lashing on the olive oil in the kiddie pool…

Around the world more and more publications are covering the story. Carter-Ruck are collecting more fees. More people are hearing about the triple trysts, even the broadsheets are delicately covering a story they would otherwise have ignored – the Streisand Effect is in operation globally. Guido wonders if Elton should consider doing a duet with Barbara?

See also: Lawyers Only People Enjoying Threesome, Ireland is Not North Korea, Kim El John