Michael Sandys, Partner and Head of Commercial with Kirwans Solicitors, on the Baby P case and the difficulty in policing internet content:

The recent breach of a court order preventing the identification of family members in the tragic case of Baby P is yet another illustration of the almost impossible task of regulating internet content.

Legislative boundaries seem to be increasing, with European law having more and more impact on the daily lives of British subjects and arrangements such as the UK/US Extradition Treaty binding continental legal systems. However, the truly global scale and lack of a central point of regulation of the internet are still causing legal headaches.

The court order to withhold the names of those involved in the case of Baby P was issued by a UK judge. Technically, therefore, a website registered under the jurisdiction of UK law and publishing the information is at risk of prosecution.

However, in the case of the social networking sites that carried the name of Baby P’s mother and in one case the name of Baby P, the information was added by users rather than the sites’ moderators. The information was removed as soon as it became apparent, but by this point thousands of internet users had viewed the details, some of them very likely accessing the internet from overseas.

The issue was exacerbated by the fact that Baby P’s mother herself had profiles on a number of these sites, which were distributed by internet ‘vigilantes’ ahead of any action to remove them.

It is clear that more proactive methods are required to ensure that potential court order breaches via the internet are minimised. Possibilities include a more formal procedure in place ahead of a court order’s creation, whether it is a stringent ‘internet trawl’ or another method. The vast scale of discussion groups and unofficial news-sites, however, would make this a mammoth task.

The other option is to simply accept that it will be virtually impossible to police court orders in an age where information literally spreads like wildfire across the web. Contingency plans would therefore be necessary. Neither option is easy, but action clearly needs to be taken.