Was Paul Staines, the blogger Guido Fawkes, required to remove from his website an early draft of Alastair Campbell's evidence to the Leveson inquiry?

Lord Justice Leveson certainly thought so. He made an order under the Inquiries Act 2005 "so as to have the effect of requiring the witness statement to be removed from the website it is presently on".

In explaining what his order meant, Leveson was merely reflecting the advice he had received from Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry. According to Jay, the order "covers any further publication – because publication is continuous – on anybody's blog or website".

Jay told Leveson at lunchtime on Monday that this had been pointed out to Staines "and he should take the appropriate steps to rectify the matter".

On Monday night, Staines caved in. His original story was replaced with the word "CENSORED"; though the unchanged web address rather gave the game away. The document-sharing site on which he had originally posted what he said was Campbell's witness statement carried instead a copy of the order that Leveson had made earlier in the day.

Respecting Leveson's request was obviously a prudent move. But what would have happened to Staines if he had not complied with it?

Leveson's order was made under section 19 of the Inquiries Act. This allows an inquiry chairman to restrict disclosure of documents so long as he thinks the restrictions are conducive to the inquiry fulfilling its terms of reference or are necessary in the public interest.

Leveson concluded that both conditions were satisfied. In his view, witness statements should not be published before they were put into evidence at the inquiry.

Although there is no doubt Leveson was acting within his powers, a glance at section 19 suggests it was not designed to delay the release of statements that were going be published anyway, or to punish leaks. Instead, it was intended to reduce the risk of "death or injury, damage to national security or international relations" and similar dire consequences by permanently preventing publication of sensitive evidence.

And did it apply to the witness statement Staines had published? Since the order was made on Monday, Staines could not have breached it when he published the document on Sunday. Is "publication" really to be regarded as a continuous act merely because a document appears online? Does section 19 allow Leveson to order a document to be unpublished?

I have my doubts. But even if section 19 is sufficiently broad, was the Staines document covered by the restriction order? That applies only to statements that are "provided to the inquiry". As Leveson himself said, the document Staines had published was not the document that Campbell had signed. It was "quite an early draft", according to Jay.

What if a witness based his statement on something he had previously written in a newspaper? Must that be withdrawn from circulation simply because it forms the basis of a statement?

If Staines hadn't blinked first, there would have been plenty for him to argue about in the high court.