Privacy injunctions and super injunctions have made the front-pages of UK newspapers in the last few days.

Through a privacy injunction, a court prevents the news media from reporting on some information or details of a story. As the BBC explained, a super-injunction stops anyone publishing information about the applicant, which is said to be confidential or private - but also prevents anyone from reporting that the injunction itself even exists.

As a Media Laws' article explained, the "super-injunction" has been widely discussed in the UK since late 2009 when the oil-trading firm Trafigura wanted to restrict the Guardian from publishing a report relating to the waste dumping scandal in Cote d'Ivoire.

In recent days the debate has arisen again because, despite some celebrities obtaining injunctions over their private stories, some Twitter users revealed the identities of celebrities protected by those injunctions.

The Guardian reflected on the relationship between Twitter, the super-injunctions and the law, here.

As The Telegraph reported, super-injunctions have been rendered "pointless" by Twitter and other social networking sites, leaving the law on so-called gagging orders in a "complete mess," as senior legal figures and politicians warned.

On Sunday the Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, published, despite an injunction lodged in England, a front-page photograph of a footballer, who is alleged to have had an affair with a model, with a thin black band across his eyes and the word "censored", the Guardian reported.

The paper, which is the first mainstream UK newspapers to name the footballer, as Journalism.co.uk noted, publish the following text below the picture:
"Everyone knows that this is the footballer accused of using the courts to keep allegations of a sexual affair secret. But we weren't supposed to tell you that ..."

The paper claimed to have not violated any law, arguing that High Court's jurisdiction was limited to England and Wales. Neither the image, editorial or article were published online in order to prevent the newspaper being accused of distributing outside of Scotland, Journalism.co.uk added.

"What we are interested in is the situation that newspapers are currently prevented from publishing information that everyone can access within seconds", said Herald editor Richard Walker.

The footballer, the article continued, is believed to be the same player who launched legal proceedings against Twitter earlier in the week and has also obtained an injunction against the Sun concerning the alleged affair with a model.

Today Prime Minister David Cameron said that it was "unsustainable" to impose gagging orders on newspapers only for them to be breached online, according to AFP. "But there's a difficulty here because the law is the law and the judges must interpret what the law is. I think the government, parliament has got to take some time out, have a proper look at this, have a think about what we can do, but I'm not sure there is going to be a simple answer", he added.

Sources: Media Laws, Telegraph, BBC, AFP, Guardian (1), (2), Journalism.co.uk