Ireland: I will always know what you did last Summer, Mr Cowen – Eoin O’Dell

The image is a thumbnail of an apology printed in yesterday’s Irish Mail on Sunday; click through for a full-size twitpic by David Cochrane. It is headed “Brian Cowen”, and it consists of four paragraph. The first paragraph (which consists of a single sentence) begins by referring to their story of Cowen’s attendance at the Executive Education Programme at Stanford University which has been the subject of three earlier posts (here, here and here) on this blog, speculating as to the strength of Cowen’s possible complaint to the Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman that article invaded his privacy.

Ireland: I still know what you did last Summer, Mr Cowen – Eoin O’Dell

This image, by Corey Seeman on Flickr, is the Monument to your Future Collaborators, on the pavement outside the Knight Management Center in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, where Brian Cowen attended the Executive Education Programme last Summer. Cowen probably walked past it, if not over it, several times.

Ireland: I know what you did last Summer, Mr Cowen – Eoin O’Dell

Brian Cowen served as Taoiseach (Prime Minister of Ireland) from 2008 to 2011. He did not stand for re-election as a TD (MP) in 2011.

I know what you did last Summer, Mr Cowen, and in fact we all know what you did last Summer, Mr Cowen, because the the Irish Mail on Sunday reported on your enrollment in the Executive Education Programme at Stanford University in California.

Ireland: And the dance goes on – Eoin O’Dell

In my previous post, I discussed a temporary injunction obtained by music promoter David Kavanagh to prevent the sale of Melanie Verwoerd’s memoir When We Dance. The book charts her Afrikaner upbringing, her marriage to the grandson of an architect of apartheid, her anti-apartheid involvement with the African National Congress, her time as South African ambassador to Ireland and as head of UNICEF Ireland, and her relationship with celebrity DJ Gerry Ryan until his unexpected death on the night of 29 April 2010.

Ireland: When ‘we dance’ to the High Court for an injunction – Eoin O’Dell

I have written before on this blog about prior restraints and temporary and permanent injunctions in defamation cases. Not long after the South African Constitutional Court effectively outlawed prior restraint in that jurisdiction (see Print Media South Africa v Minister of Home Affairs [2012] ZACC 22 (28 September 2012); blogged here), I learn that on Wednesday 10 October 2012 Gilligan J in the High Court in Ireland granted temporary injunctions to prevent the sale of a memoir written by the South African partner of a deceased celebrity Irish DJ (cover right):

Fighting anonymity with anonymity: open justice and cyberbullying – Eoin O’Dell

Say you are a 15-year old girl. What would you do if you find a fake Facebook profile which contains a photograph of you, a slightly modified version of your name and other particulars which identified you, which discusses your physical appearance and weight in derogatory terms, and which includes scandalous sexual commentary about you?  First, you’d contact Facebook, to have the fake profile taken down and to identify the IP address associated with it.

Opinion: We need a Privacy Bill in Ireland, just not this one – Eoin O’Dell

The drumbeats for privacy legislation can once again be heard around Leinster House. I did a radio interview with Matt Cooper on Today FM’s The Last Word and I had an op-ed about it in the Irish Examiner:

Political Broadcasting in Ireland – Eoin O’Dell

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) is the body responsible for the regulation of broadcasting in Ireland, and two of its recent decisions raise the same question of whether a power provided to it by the Broadcasting Act, 2009 (also here) is consistent with the right to freedom of expression protected by the Irish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.