SCANDAL — don’t you love it? Whether it be sexual shenanigans or dodgy dealings, we lap it up. If it wasn’t so engrossing the News of the World wouldn’t sell 3.5 million copies a week, making it the most popular newspaper in Britain. And because the story is often hidden, readers and critics alike know that the tabloid and its competitors often resort to subterfuge to get the news.

And if the results are entertaining, people rarely complain. When Sven-Göran Eriksson was fooled by a fake sheikh into making some rather indiscreet remarks, complaints about the way the News of the World broke the story were muted, when compared with the criticism of the former England manager. The story was good enough for the Football Association to cut short Eriksson’s contract.

Moralising about tabloids can seem pointless when they are so popular, and when there’s so much competition. That said, the arrest of Clive Goodman, the newspaper’s royal editor — allegedly for being involved in the interception of voicemails — marks a change in the rules of the game.

It is a staple of investigative journalism, and not just at the red tops, to obtain ex-directory numbers, phone records and voicemails in pursuit of a story. Journalists rarely do this themselves, paying private detectives instead, but the information can be vital in helping to put together a story that would otherwise remain untold.

Such practices sit in a grey area, but have rarely provoked official concern. Clause 10 of the Press Complaints Commission’s code says that newspapers “must not seek to obtain or publish material . . . by intercepting private or mobile telephone calls, messages or e-mails,” but it allows, reasonably, a public interest defence.

Complaints under Clause 10 are rare. Yet the pressure is on to tilt the balance away from the media, clamping down on the trade in private information. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, wants to introduce a two-year jail term for journalists involved in a trade that he is clearly unhappy about. A government consultation has begun.

Two years in jail is grossly excessive, but the Goodman case brings it into prospect immediately. It is illegal to tap phone calls, unless you are a security agency with special permission, although hacking into voicemails is a greyer area. Call records, meanwhile, can now be made available to a wide variety of public bodies.

Some journalists have operated on the principle that a hack is not as serious as a tap. After all, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, under which Goodman has been charged, says that what is prohibited is the interception of “communication in the course of its transmission”. Yet the point about the precise law is for the moment moot: what matters is that it is a criminal offence carrying a maximum two-year jail term — and it is not clear that there’s a public interest defence either.

Whether it was wise to target the Royal Family in this way — as the News of the World is alleged to have done — is debatable. News about the Royals is obviously valuable, but Clarence House is clearly fed up, and powerful enough to rouse the police. Suddenly, a six-year-old Act of Parliament, not obviously designed to regulate the press, has been pressed into service.

Nevertheless, one case should not be allowed to make bad law. You can argue about what constitutes the public interest; such a defence, though, should be available, because at times, the use of subterfuge is necessary — if it helps to expose a gang of terrorists, for example. Otherwise, rules emerge that will be used disproportionately by the rich and powerful to suppress legitimate journalism.

• The crude attempt by solicitors for Gina Ford to close down Mumsnet, a parenting website, is a reminder that when it comes to the internet, defamation law is ridiculous.

  At the moment it is possible, crazily, to sue the company that provides space for a website, when it is not exerting a mite of editorial control. It is also possible to sue a website over comments made in a discussion forum after the offending remarks have been drawn to the site owner’s attention.

  As a result, most site owners, and hosting companies, take the easy way out and take down anything at the first sight of a legal letter. That may be appropriate in some cases, but it would be better, firstly, to get into a debate with the critic, or if that doesn’t work, sue that person directly. Where they are anonymous, it would make sense for sites to disclose the foul-mouthed poster’s identity.

  But common sense and the law do not always go together.

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