Can someone explain this to me RE: Taxi fare dodge case

A student has lost his case against six newspapers in a bid to block them naming him in connection with a defamatory video.

Eoin McKeogh, a student at Dublin City University, says he was not in the country at the time of an allegedly criminal incident which surfaced in a video on the internet.

Today, High Court Judge Michael Peart said the right to have justice administered in public far exceeded the right to privacy other than in exceptional cases and this was not an exceptional case.

He said it was counterintuitive that someone would try to vindicate his good name anonymously.

Mr Justice Michael Peart said the court did not have a magic wand and the damage was done. He said the genie was out of the bottle.

The video showed a group of people refusing to pay a taxi fare late at night. Mr McKeogh was wrongly identified online as being in the taxi car.

Today, Mr Justice Michael Peart also said he was completely satisfied by a perusal of Mr McKeogh's passport that he was in Japan at the time the video was made and could not have been depicted in it.

Mr McKeogh's lawyer Pauline Walley also told the court that the taxi driver had come before the court in an earlier hearing and said Mr McKeogh was not in the car.

Eoin McKeogh has already secured temporary injunctions preventing named internet sites, including Facebook and Google, from broadcasting the allegedly defamatory video.

That case will return to the High Court on Friday.

All the newspapers have applied for costs in the case as has Mr McKeogh's own lawyer.

Mr Justice Michael Peart adjourned the question of costs until 10 February.