Intellectual Property Law

On Max Mosley’s Privacy Verdict

By Tim Armstrong, Derek Bambauer, and William McGeveran.

Big news in London, where Max Mosley, president of the body that oversees Formula One auto racing, won a large court victory against the British tabloid News of the World. The case has garnered enormous attention in Britain, partly because it was seen as potentially an important decision about the balance between privacy and free speech, but perhaps more because of its connection to sadomasochistic orgies, car racing, and Nazis.

Mosley is the son of Sir Oswald Mosley, a politician and baronet who infamously founded the British Union of Fascists in the 1930s. Earlier this year, the News of the World, the most salacious of the country’s tabloids (and that’s saying something…) published a splashy front-page article headlined “F1 BOSS HAS SICK NAZI ORGY WITH 5 HOOKERS.” The paper had paid one of the prostitutes and given her a secret video camera to wear in her bra and film the proceedings. Mosley sued, but not for defamation, because he admits that the main parts of the story are true — he has long been involved in such sexual practices and he’s had group S&M sex with the same women before, at times without paying them. Rather, he claimed that printing the intimate details of his private sexual encounter violated his privacy under the European Convention of Human Rights and he denied any Nazi element to his activities. (Timeline here.)

The case turned on the public interest — or lack of it — in revealing details of Mosley’s sex life. The court held that despite his fairly prominent position as president of a major sports organization (and son of a very famous politician who is now deceased), Mosley retained rights to privacy. There needed to be more justification for the disclosure than merely his celebrity status — perhaps showing that his previous public statements were not truthful or revealing a threat to public health or safety.

Full post as published by Info/Law on July 24, 2008 (boomark / email).