Donal Blaney, a conservative British blogger and lawyer, successfully convinced the UK's High Court to allow him to serve a court injunction against a Twitter user that he claimed was harmfully impersonating him, @blaneysblarney, via Twitter. Unlike the US, the UK allows injunctions to be emailed, but a Twittered injunction is a legal first.

The firstness of this was duly noted by TIME, the BBC, The Guardian -- and, not least of all, by Blaney himself, who blogged about how he suspected that " readership today will be swelled by a number of visitors," and by Griffin Law, the law firm that handled the matter, which promptly wrote a post titled "Griffin Law makes law by serving via Twitter." Blaney is the sole principal of Griffin Law, though according to the site, barrister Matthew Richardson "devised and won the Blaney’s Blarney Order."

A cynical question worth asking: was this a big, staged publicity stunt?

It's impossible to tell, but here's why it could be.

(more...)