Twitter is having another one of those ‘I’m Spartacus!’ moments. The last one was when the powers that be decided someone making a joke post about blowing up Robin Hood Airport was a potential terrorist and prosecuted the poor sod.

The Twittersphere responded by retweeting the posting in question, on the basis that the police couldn’t arrest everyone. The same thing has now happened following the ridiculous situation where everyone and their dog knows the identity of a footballer who stands accused of doing what footballers seem to do when not kicking a ball around and earning obscene amounts of money.

An MP even used his Parliamentary privilege to suggest the footballer in question was Ryan Giggs. Something the masses on Twitter have been doing for the past fortnight or so, with tens of thousands of tweets and retweets naming the Manchester United player.

Most everyone, including it would appear the Prime Minister, has admitted the situation is such that these super injunctions are dead in the water and need to be looked at again. I say most everyone, as some lawyers who specialise in privacy law (surprise, surprise) think it’s outrageous that people on Twitter have ‘outed’ a poor footballer in this way and have called for every one of them to be prosecuted. Funnily enough, a certain footballer (who I shall refrain from naming) has allegedly instructed his lawyers to chase the Tweeting masses in just this manner.

Will the temptation be to try and control social networks and silence the voices of the tweeting masses?

While High Court Judges are notoriously out of touch with reality, those law makers a few decades younger and who live in the real world can surely not have failed to notice the power of Twitter. Which leaves me wondering which way they will swing: will the temptation be to try and control social networks and silence the voices of the tweeting masses? Or will they realise that free speech and the wisdom of crowds will always eventually expose stupid laws for exactly what they are?

I’m hopeful that it will be the latter, not least as the new Government appointed Twitter Tsar (or to be more precise the Executive Director of Digital Efficiency and Reform Group, Cabinet Office) is one Mike Bracken. While you may not recognise the name, you will recognise the web legacy he has left behind.

Bracken is a founder of the Mysociety Project, perhaps best known for the TheyWorkForYou website. This important site made it easy for ordinary folk like you and I to discover not only how to get in touch with our MP, but also exactly what they had been getting up to, how they voted, what they said in speeches and much more. Bracken has been a pioneering beacon in the world of the online democratisation of politics. As such, surely he would applaud the Twittersphere in helping to expose the daftness of the super-injunction culture that has exploded into the limelight this week?

Mike Bracken was unavailable for comment, unfortunately, so I can only guess that he would adopt a more sympathetic attitude to social networks than many in the corridors of power.  He doesn’t actually start the position until July, and although the fuss may have blown over by then the fallout will most certainly not have vanished. In his own blog  about accepting the new role, Bracken states “I’ve had the great fortune to work with hundreds of digital developers, and I know at heart they want to change the world and improve digital services from the users perspective. Now seems to be the time to give them a chance.”

Let’s hope that changing the world includes users as well as developers…

However, we currently have two Apple iPhone 4s on loan in the office, with our reviews editor Jon Bray grabbing one and me the other, and that means for the first time I’ve come face to face with the iTunes Store Terms & Conditions and Apple’s Privacy Policy.

I first met this on the iPhone 4 itself. I wanted to download an app, so clicked on the option to set up a new iTunes Store account. And that’s when I was faced with this screen (photographed by the other iPhone 4, just for the record):

As you can see, Apple expects me to read 99 pages of terms and conditions. When I click Agree, I’m asked to confirm “I have read and agree to the iTunes Store Terms & Conditions”. Right, of course I have.

But I’m being unfair, I told myself. It’s only 99 pages on the iPhone; I bet if I try to set up a new account online it’s far fewer pages to scroll through. So, I fired up iTunes, followed the wizard and was greeted by this:

It still wasn’t clear just how many words I had to wade through, so I copied and pasted them into Word. This screenshot tells you all you need to know:

That’s no mistake. 48 pages, over 26,000 words. I reckon it would take me half an hour to read that with the attention necessary to spot any terms and conditions I disagree with. But, of course, I’m not going to do that. No one will, except lawyers and journalists far more pedantic than me.

So I’ve got two questions, which I’m hoping PC Pro readers will be able to help me with. First, would these terms and conditions stand up in court? And second, have you encountered any more ridiculous Ts&Cs?

MySpace has been quick to make much fuss about this being a record payout, about it being the biggest judgement in a CAN-SPAM Act ruling yet. Fair play, at face value there does seem cause for celebration. Anything that helps take down the spammer scum has got to be good news, right?

Wrong.

Mainly because this judgement will do no such thing, MySpace might just as well have been awarded a billion bucks, or even a gazillion for that matter: they will never see a penny of it. Sanford ’spamford’ Wallace already owes millions in fines to other folk and so ordering him to compensate MySpace to the tune of $100 in damages for each and every spam message that was sent to its members is pointless. More so when you consider that he went to ground ages ago and, to para-phrase Gordon Ramsey there is as much chance “of Anthony Worrell Thompson getting a Michelin star” as there is of him coughing up the cash.

Still, the fact that Judge Collins issued an injunction against Spamford and his cohort in crime to prevent them from participating in similar spamming activity in future will do the trick though…

The truth is that Spamford is no stranger to lawsuits and court, I can recall him being sued by AOL and CompuServe way back in the 90’s as well as more recently being on the receiving end of a $4 million ruling. Why on earth would any successful spammer shut up shop when the sheer scale of the money they can make is obvious to everyone? we are not talking hundreds or thousands of pounds here, not even hundreds of thousands, but millions.

No, the only way to stop spam and put the spammers out of business is for YOU to stop reading the stuff, stop buying the products advertised and stop clicking on the links within.