An exampleScrews[/i had to try to set him up in such a way that he would make a Nazi salute and therefore give them some justification for publication – on the basis of who his father was.

Similarly, the revelations about Angus Deayton – and nobody was remotely interested in what he'd done that was illegal (snort coke) but only his having sex with prostitutes. Deayton, through [iHIGNFY[/i had ridiculed the double standards of minister and others, but since he had not himself ever made a statement about what he considered morally acceptable etc, he was not himself guilty of those double standards – which [iwould[/i have given a public interest justification.

To be frank, I suspect that most of us in the trade know and completely understand this. It's not rocket science.

It may not be rocket science to those "in the trade", but I suspect when it comes time to put some sort of proper privacy laws onto the statute books the trade won't be writing them. Indeed, it will be the one pulling at the edges of any legislation trying to find loopholes under which it can publish salacious material dressed up as public interest to increase circulation.

For every clear cut case, there will be one which sits somewhere on the margins, and those margins will be set by judges dictating precedent. Given the ways things went with super-injunctions and the judiciary - grant first, ask questions later - it's likely to lead to public interest having a very narrow legal definition and many worthwhile stories prevented from being published.

So the status quo, then? What we have is not acceptable. We have commoditised private life – with enormous cost. The story of the Watson's is just utterly tragic and depressing. So too of Mosley's son. The grotesque treatment meted out to the like of Christopher Jeffries – it is absolutely unacceptable.

Mind, I keep asking (and people keep avoiding – and this is not aimed at you specifically, Andy), what about the responsibility of those who buy the tripe? They're at least as culpable and at least as pathetic as those who write and publish it. Without them, there's no market ...

Status quo in the short term, but the more this story runs and grows the louder the clamour is going to become for a "proper" privacy law. The press may want to start thinking very carefully about how it is seen to behave, lest it reaps the consequences by having to operate with one hand behind its back in future.

You haven't been listening to the Colombian president again have you? That's like blaming the users for the drug trade - just because someone buys Heat magazine once a week doesn't make them responsible for Milly Dowler's phone being hacked.

I wouldn't be so keen to describe someone as "pathetic" on the basis of their reading choices either - different strokes for different folks, as Max Mosley might have said...

I've no love for that slapper at all, but when it comes to access to her son, I think she's actually in the right. She's the one who's shagged her way to fame, not him..

There was a good article in the Guardian by rlalex bailinrl

There must be a balance and the treatment of the Dowlers was inexcuseable. However, if it comes down to a choice between upsetting a film actor, or curtailing good investigative journalists and their abilities to root out corruption, then I'd be firmly in the journalists' camp.

For me, the star of the Leveson Inquirey is Robert Jay QC. I certainly enjoyed his gentle admonishments to Hugh Grant, that opinion, supposition, or what his friends believed were not actually evidence......

So that'll be 95% of his case filed in the waste paper bin then!

She's also the one who's been quite happy to play on the fact he's severely disabled in newspaper and magazine stories when she's wanted some public sympathy...

When reading choices have an impact on the life of someone that one is reading voyeuristically about ...

Would you, for instance, think that those who read terrorist manuals or materials designed to encourage terrorist acts have no responsibility for what their reading choices are or the impact that the publication of those might have?

Different strokes, etc.

Personally, I have no comprehension of why anyone wants to spend money buying any of the trashy gossip rags that have grown up like weeds in recent years.

Why do people want to read the details of other's lives – whether those who do not parade their private lives or those like Katie Price who do?

Why? Someone explain it to me: why do you care? What right do you have to poke your nose into their lives? What do you get out of reading this trash that improves your life and how?

You talk of "treatment". What was different about the "treatment of the Dowlers that you say (rightly) was inexcusable and the treatment of the Watsons or the treatment of Mosley? Or yes, of Grant?

If the treatment was "inexcusable" in one case, why not in others?

I hardly think Al Qaeda are worried about circulation figures, at least no more than Nuts magazine are encouraging jihad.

A poor choice of comparison.

I'll say it again - the readership of NoTW, or its kind, should not be held responsible for the actions its owners and managers took (or turned a blind eye to) in order to obtain stories, particularly given that they weren't aware of the methods that were being used at the time to gather information.

You may as well criticize the Fritzls neighbours for not reporting to Social Services that two old folks were going through a wheelbarrow of food between them every week.

Rumours that James Murdoch has resigned.....

Edit - turns out it's just as director of the companies that publish The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun

Very good point ... defining precisely what is in the public interest is tricky.
We all "know" but would have difficulty defining it.

Nonetheless, we have had statutes before (About whistle-blowing) where the reasonable-ness of the person's belief in it being in the public interest was a key factor.

Comedy is subjective, I am not a great fan of his, but for the papers to tap his phone to get hold of 'tittle tattle' is simply wrong.

A poor choice of comparison, one might say, Andy.

I would add that the drugs comparison doesn't really work either (or at least not fully). Although it's fairly simplistic a view of a more complex case, most of those who grow or sell drugs do so in the knowledge of what they're doing and, for whatever reason, having presumably reached a conclusion that they will do that.

So that puts the consumer in a rather different relationship to the producer than it does where someone's private life is invaded, without their permission, and then sold for the entertainment of others. That is not to say that there is no ethical complexity to the relationship between drug producer, seller and consumer, but it is clearly not the same.