[Omah]

http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2011/0...-councillors-/

Twitter fans who enthusiastically tweeted about Ryan Giggs last week, secure in the knowledge that the website was based in America, where freedom of the press is much greater than in the UK, have been given a rude shock.

The American social networking site Twitter bowed to a court action brought by a British group complaining that they were libelled in messages, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Councillors and officials at the South Tyneside local authority launched the case to track down a whistle-blower calling himself Mr Monkey, who over the past three years has made a raft of claims about councillors, alleging everything from ballot-rigging, to drug-taking and fiddling expenses. One story claimed one individual successfully ordered a public bus to turn around and pick him up from a pub late at night.

The council action raised in California did not come cheap. Their victory is believed to have cost local tax payers hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The unprecedented ruling has prompted a row over freedom of speech. Experts told the Telegraph it may lead to a flood of actions by lawyers in other cases seeking to obtain personal information about people who breach super-injunctions or post supposedly libellous messages on Twitter.

"Chicken" Twitter .....