A fascinating media tangle is unfolding in the UK today, as The Sun newspaper goes against the wishes of Buckingham Palace and publishes pictures of a naked Prince Harry that have been widely circulated on the web. The newspaper’s editor pleads the freedom of the press and the public interest; media lawyers deny that there is any public interest in this particular game of strip billiards. Meanwhile radio pundits point out that ‘the genie was out of the bottle’–which strikes me as a lovely metaphor for the internet.

The whole debate is framed by the Leveson Inquiry, an ongoing parliamentary investigation into the malpractices of ‘red-top’ newspapers which, over the past few years, have got many of their most salacious stories through illegal phone-hacking. And it’s given added piquancy by the eternal soap opera of the royal family, which The Sun professes (ma’am!) to hold in the highest esteem. Beyond that, there’s the serious anxiety that newspapers might prove unsustainable in the age of free and instant online content. It’s a right royal mess, but with implications that go far beyond this prince caught with his pants down.