preventing publication of what is widely known, if it is not to lose public respect for the law by giving the appearance of being out of touch with reality. 89. Lord Mance says at para 33 that the requirement under section 12(4)(a)(i) of the HRA for the court to pay particular regard to “the extent to which the material has, or is about to, become available to the public” must be considered with reference to the form in relation to which injunctive relief is to be sought. As I read the words of the Act, they require the court to take into account how generally available the information has become from whatever source, be it broadcast journalism, print journalism, the internet or social media. The evident underlying purpose of the subsection is to discourage the granting of an injunction to prevent publication of information which is already widely known. If the information is in wide, general circulation from whatever source or combination of sources, I do not see that it should make a significant difference whether the medium of the intended publication is the internet, print journalism or broadcast journalism. The world of public information is interactive and indivisible. 90. I do not underestimate the acute unpleasantness for PJS of the story being splashed, but I doubt very much in the long run whether it will be more enduring than the unpleasantness of what has been happening and will inevitably continue to happen. The story is not going to go away, injunction or no injunction. It is a fact of life that stories about celebrities sometimes acquire their own momentum. In relation to the children, the Court of Appeal took account of their position both in its January judgment and in its recent judgment. They are very young and there are various steps which their parents can take to shield them from the immediate publicity. As the Court of Appeal said, it is inevitable in the longer term that the children will learn about these matters and their parents have no doubt already considered how they propose to handle it. 91. The case of Editions Plon v France, to which Lord Mance has referred, arose from the publication shortly after the death of President Mitterand of a book by his doctor entitled “Le Grand Secret”. The French court granted an application by the late president’s widow and children for an interlocutory injunction to stop its distribution. The doctor was subsequently prosecuted, fined and given a suspended prison sentence. Final judgment in the civil proceedings was given nine months after the president’s death. Substantial damages were awarded to his widow and children and the injunction was made permanent. The Strasbourg court held that the temporary injunction had been legitimate, because the publication had occurred so soon after the president’s death when his family were grieving. It did not consider that the permanent injunction satisfied the requirement of serving a pressing social need, particularly having regard to the other remedies which had been ordered and to the fact that the story was widely available on the internet. I recognise that the facts were very different from those of the present case, and that the content of the book raised matters of undoubted public interest, but the case nevertheless shows Page 38