Max Mosley has failed to prevent the News of the World from posting a video on its website of him apparently indulging in a Nazi-style sex orgy with five prostitutes.

The president of the world governing body of motorsport, the Fédération Internationale de l’Auto mobile (FIA), went to court to try and prevent the video’s publication.

Mr Mosley intially managed to force the newspaper to remove the video the day after it was originally posted on 30 March. But by then many other sites had copied the footage - making it available to a wide audience.

Today a High Court Judge overturned his application on the grounds that images of the orgy were “already in the public domain”. Mr Justice Eady said that preventing the paper from republishing them on its website would be like King Canut holding back the waves.

The judge said: "I have come to the conclusion that the material is so widely accessible that an order in the terms sought would make very little practical difference.

"One may express this conclusion either by saying that Mr Mosley no longer has any reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of this now widely familiar material or that, even if he has, it has entered the public domain to the extent that there is, in practical terms, no longer anything which the law can protect. The dam has effectively burst.

"I have, with some reluctance, come to the conclusion that although this material is intrusive and demeaning, and despite the fact that there is no legitimate public interest in its further publication, the granting of an order against this respondent at the present juncture would merely be a futile gesture."

Mr Mosley had not objected to the words written about him, a News of the World source said. But the embattled son of Sir Oswald Mosley, the British Fascist leader, claimed that the video of the orgy, coupled with still images apparently showing him whipping the prostitutes while dressed in military uniform, invaded his privacy.

The FIA president was said to have re-enacted an alleged concentration camp scene in which he played the role of both guard and inmate and, speaking in German, beat the women and allowed himself to be inspected for lice and “interrogated” in chains. The revelations shocked Jewish groups and leading figures in Formula One.

He is now suing the News of the World for substantial damages in a trial which will take place in June.

Lawyers for the paper said they were confident they would win the case, claiming that it was in the public interest for Mr Mosley’s activities to be exposed.

“He’s the governing head of a global body wth 100 million members,” said Tom Crone, the News of the World’s legal Manager.

“The FIA takes in so many cultures and creeds around the world that the sensitivities of what he was doing are grossly offensive to various categories.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Third of Muslim students back killings
• Curfew tames feral yobs of Cornwall
• £3,000-a-month drug free abroad