Court injunctions banning the media from reporting that the rich and famous have won gagging orders should only be granted where strictly necessary, a long-awaited judicial report said on Friday.
Newspapers and broadcasters who may be silenced by such bans should also be informed beforehand, according to senior judge David Neuberger.
But in a note of warning, he urged MPs opposed to injunctions to think twice before using their centuries-old right of unrestricted freedom of speech in parliament to undermine them.
Neuberger began an inquiry last year after a row over a super-injunction granted to married England football captain John Terry to stop the media publicising his affair with a teammate's ex-girlfriend.
Super-injunctions ban the publication of details of the case in question and any mention of the ban itself, and their increasing use has sparked concern that the principles of press freedom and open justice were being undermined.
The report revealed that only two super-injunctions had been issued in the past year, but said there had been number of anonymised injunctions, where media can report the existence of the ban but not the person who brought it.
It stressed the importance of conducting justice in the open and said judges should depart from this only where "strictly necessary", and then injunctions should be short-term and kept under review by the court.
It recommended the media be alerted in advance about applications for injunctions, subject to a confidentiality agreement.
"Where privacy and confidentiality are involved, a degree of secrecy is often necessary to do justice," Neuberger, known as the Master of the Rolls, told a press conference in London.
"However, where secrecy is ordered it should only be to the extent strictly necessary to achieve the interests of justice."
Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge, Britain's top judge, acknowledged that injunctions are often ignored by bloggers or users of social networks such as Twitter, and there is little that the authorities can do to stop them.
He said the Internet offered "by no means the same degree of intrusion into privacy as the story being emblazoned on the front pages of newspapers", which are more trusted.
But he added: "I'm not giving up on the possibility that people who peddle lies about others through technology may not one day be brought under control."
The judges meanwhile issued a warning to MPs who have used their right to free speech, known as parliamentary privilege, to deliberately undermine injunctions.
On Thursday, a member of the House of Lords revealed that Fred Goodwin, the former boss of the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland, had won an injunction banning publication of details of an alleged affair with a colleague.
Goodwin's name had already been revealed in March by a member of the House of Commons, and the High Court subsequently quashed the anonymity order that had been protecting him.
Judge questioned "whether it's a good idea for our lawmakers to be flouting a court order just because they disagree with a court order or they disagree with the privacy law created by parliament."
Prime Minister David Cameron said last month he felt "uneasy" about the creeping use of injunctions to gag the media, echoing the concerns of many MPs.
However, Judge said they were only a reflection of the 1998 Human Rights Act, which enshrined the European Convention on Human Rights and created a British privacy law for the first time.
Cameron's spokesman said the report was "very useful" and would be considered "very carefully".
In a note of caution to the media, the report warned that journalists' right to repeat parliamentary proceedings without fear of legal action may be undermined if the information concerned aimed to frustrate a court order.
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