There have been calls for a review of the contempt laws following disarray over publicity in the cash-for-honours investigation.

On March 5 the Attorney General tried to obtain an injunction against the Guardian to gag its reporting about an e-mail, uncovered in the investigation, from Downing Street aide Ruth Turner to No.10 chief of staff Jonathan Powell. The e-mail apparently suggested Labour fundraiser Lord Levy had tried to influence her evidence.

However, the Guardian persuaded a High Court judge it should be free to publish. It was an important practical consideration, said the judge, that the newspaper had already gone to print.

The outcome appeared inconsistent with a ruling by a different High Court judge, on March 2, granting the Attorney-General a contempt injunction to stop the BBC reporting a similar story about the Turner e-mail. The Metropolitan Police had complained its broadcast would create a substantial risk of serious impediment to their inquiry, in breach of the strict liability contempt rule applicable to ‘active’ proceedings under S.2 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

In the ensuing disarray, the Attorney-General agreed to a relaxation of the BBC’s injunction but still refused to agree that legal argument from the March 2 hearing could be published. The BBC then appealed successfully to the Court of Appeal and had that aspect of the injunction lifted.

Following the eventual victory for free speech over ‘prior restraint’, commentators including Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger have called for a review of the law.

Meanwhile as newspapers and magazines rapidly expanding their online presence, internet copyright has become the hot topic of the moment after Google found itself embroiled in ground-breaking litigation.

A Belgian court has ruled that Google News infringed copyright by reproducing headlines and short extracts from certain newspaper articles. The court decided Google’s hypertext links and cache of newspapers’ content breached copyright.

Google, which is to appeal, argued unsuccessfully that copyright should cede to the right to freedom of expression under Art. 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that its copying fell within the ‘fair dealing’ exceptions for news reporting, criticism and review.

The court disregarded the widespread assumption that a website is deemed to grant ‘implied’ permission for extracts to be copied and cached unless its robot-based protocols expressly refuse such permission.

The issue remains untested in the English courts – where it’s uncertain the Belgian lead would be followed, unless a “substantial part” of an original work were copied, and ‘implied’-permission arguments dismissed.

In a double-whammy, Google is also being sued for breach of copyright in New York. Viacom has issued a lawsuit over 160,000 video clips from its cable networks which it claims have appeared on Google’s YouTube without permission.