Yesterday, the identity of the premiership footballer dominating news pages across the country for the past month, was finally revealed by MP John Hemming on live TV as a result of parliamentary privilege. However, most of us Twitter users already knew the name of the footballer in question weeks ago… although I’m going to refrain from writing it at risk of being sued.

The whole debacle has raised the argument of whether super injunctions are sustainable and also whether they are fair.

This ‘affair’ seems to have proved that super injunctions aren’t particularly sustainable. In this day and age, when the majority of people in this country engage more through social networking than actually talking to each other, super injunctions don’t really stand a chance. The front page of the Sunday Herald summed it up finely: why should newspapers not be allowed to print information that is freely available to millions of people on the internet?

To answer the latter question, super injunctions are hugely unfair and some might go as far as saying that these privacy laws were created as to protect the rich. As little as I care for Imogen Thomas, it is completely unjust to strip her of her own right to privacy and freedom of expression, just because she doesn’t have upwards of £50,000 to protect herself.

I do believe that He Who Must Not Be Named has a right to privacy, but I disagree that it’s any more important than somebody else’s right to those same basic human rights. The footballer in question knew what he was doing when he had an affair and now it’s time to deal with the consequences. However, none of us, including the media, has a right to say what those consequences should be. Just as with the John Terry debacle, what he does in his private life is his business, just as what Imogen Thomas does in her private life is her business.

What is clear is that what the Independent described as Britain’s “best-known secret” has thrown privacy laws into chaos and is sure to cause changes to media law. What many thought could be the beginning of the end for tabloid kiss and tell stories could in fact be the end of privacy laws to protect the rich, and in a country where we supposedly have a free press, this can only be a good thing, right?