cleanfeed and wikipedia

[Ian Batten]

On 10 Dec 08, at 1441, Roland Perry wrote:

> In article <9104AF84-DC66-46D0-9251-2C025098B4FF@batten.eu.org>, Ian  
> Batten <igb@batten.eu.org> writes
>> Does anyone know if juries are, in reality, asked to do this?  Is  
>> the criminality of the images themselves, as opposed to the  
>> circumstances of possession and any legitimate defence for an  
>> otherwise criminal image, actually tried by a jury?
>
> On one hand most of the (press) reported cases seem to involve  
> people who plead guilty, on the other hand if someone is convicted  
> of having "twelve level 1 images", then one of the things the  
> defence might want to demonstrate is that none of them are in fact  
> infringing (ie Level 1) at all.

But who would make that judgement?   Suppose that someone does plead  
not guilty.

Their defence might well be ``these images aren't indecent, and even  
if they are indecent the evidence linking them to me is weak, and even  
if they are indecent and they are on my computer they were downloaded  
by a trojan, and even if they they are indecent and they are mine and  
I did download I was only doing so as part of my MA in criminology  
which took me to some pretty hooky albeit apparently legal websites  
let me tell you.''.

At each point witnesses would be called and cross-examined, and at the  
end the jury would retire and reach a verdict.  Suppose it's `not  
guilty'.  You'd know exactly nothing about the legality or otherwise  
of the images qua images, because in UK law you aren't allowed to ask  
the jury to indicate the parts of the defence they accepted and the  
parts of the defence they rejected.

The only way you could begin to reach a judgement on images would be  
for someone to run a ``these aren't the images you're looking for''  
defence, as their _sole_ line of defence, and win.  Even then, the  
jury might have acquitted them because they thought the defendant had  
a pretty face.

So in fact, I suspect the only way you'd resolve this would be for the  
matter of the legality of the images to be appealed by the defendant.   
Appeal courts _do_ justify their decisions, and that might give you  
some sort of precedent.  It's not a field I study, but I don't believe  
that such an appeal has taken place.


>
>
> I've not been to any such trial, but the press reports strongly  
> suggest that it's the police (via the CPS etc) who assert what level  
> the pictures are, which is consistent with the IWF using the police  
> for their own training.

Precisely.  But that's not an ideal situation, is it?

ian