I agree with Northern Piper about his interpretation of Sharp. I tried to keep it short, and relevant to the original Australian case, in which there was no indication of the offender distributing the cartoons. In the circumstances that arose in Australia, the Sharp decision would seem to put the conviction at risk.
And I note that there would appear no possibility of those in the “It’s an outrage, I tells ya!” camp coming to any middle ground with those who advance the “Feeds the market, adds oxygen to perversion” school of thought. Hence, voting. But I suspect that those offended by the decision are in a decided minority outside of this Board.
As to Heins’s book, I can’t say I’ve read it. She is apparently a lawyer, not a social scientist, and clearly has an agenda to push (at least,so far as one can tell from her Wiki page). But I am profoundly sceptical of social science that purports to give definitive answers to fraught problems that have troubled the world since Og clicked the start button. I am of course not against science, just premature declarations of conclusions in fields where it is obvious that someone will almost certainly be able to claim with some justification that the studies are flawed. There is a reason the expression “social science numbers” is pejorative in some circles.
My scepticism about social science findings of this nature is however beaten by a wide margin by my scepticism about speculative conclusions based on no evidence or considered statistics at all, reached in the midst of a moral panic about a taboo subject, against people who are social pariahs.
I just read about this case. But as I understand it, the woman finallly wasn’t sentenced, so apparently you can’t be sent to jail for breaching MySpace’s terms of use in the USA. Or was the article I read not up to date?
Can’t argue with that, but all you can do when you’re sceptical about both sides of an argument is to apply the best judgment you can. I think most members of the public (which is to say, jurors) I see are well aware of the perils of moral panic. They still acquit child molesters at a far greater rate than other crimes. Yes, the evidence is often weaker than in other cases, but moral panic does not seem to incline jurors to make up the slack in the evidence.
I find it a comforting thought that people can see past the Helen Lovejoy tropes of the media.
clairobscur, there may have been developments since the article to which I linked. But on the face of what you say, surely the fact that the woman wasn’t sentenced to jail doesn’t mean of itself that she couldn’t have been, sentencing discretion being what it is?
Unfortunately, some ideas, assumptions and urban legends are so ingrained in our society that the average judge (or person) doesn’t think to question it.
I’m fairly late to the thread. But was also suitably shocked to read the decision.
I also saw the story in the paper about the apartment building overlooking the school playground. My immedaite thought at the time was ‘what a load of crap’.
If I can semi-OT for a mini rant of my own for a moment
I am becoming increasingly worried about the culture in Australia, and these are signs of the problem. We seem to be increasingly subject to to kneejerk reactions and laws passed based upon the rantings of a vocal minority, rather than any sort of majority view. And as Princhester mentioned earlier in the thread, we have the terrible situation at present that a christian fundamentalist effectively holds the balance of power in our federal governments Upper House.
I read an interesting article the other day, which I had to agree with. Australia and Australian’s used to be renowned for having a healthy distrust of authority. It was virtually the national identity once upon a time. A part I suppose of the admittedly sterotypical, ‘devil may care, larrikin attitude’. Now it seems we are increasingly becoming just another herd of sheep meekingly bowing to the latest alarmist hystery thrown up by the vocal minority helped by the media chasing ever more sensationlist headlines.
Nothing to add that hasn’t already been said I guess…
But, I’ve thought for a long time that a bill of rights might be a good idea for Australia. When people are put under the public spotlight (i.e., politicians) I think they often have a tendency to champion causes that no-one can oppose, but that they wouldn’t otherwise really care about (“Clean Air” legislation, etc etc). And because they don’t care about it so much, they only have blunt instruments at their disposal for dealing with the issues.
When professionals in the field of pedophilia reach a consensus that sexually themed cartoons involving under-aged fictional characters cause or exacerbate the condition, then we can move to restrict their proliferation, and criminalize possession of them. Otherwise, it’s just a crap shoot, or someone’s best guess about how to deal with the problem. It’s not good enough.
Who knows, maybe this guy was a pedophile and everyone in that world “knew” it but none of the cops could get any hard evidence to prove it, save for these cartoons. On the other hand maybe he was just a guy that surfed the web and liked the simpsons. Per Blackstone: “better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”.
But the worst part of this case is the fact that I don’t think a reasonable person would have thought that s/he shouldn’t be keeping Simpsons porno cartoons on his computer because it would be illegal. The appellate court itself said as much when it admitted that this was a hard case (from memory I think it did?), and the first decision on this point, so costs were split on a party/party basis. I think when a judge admits that no-one could have known what the true legal position was with regard to this legislation, but then finds someone guilty anyway, he’s basically telling you there is a big problem.
I suppose it depends on why she wasn’t sentenced. I don’t remember anymore what the article said.
Anyway, in this case, the “not respecting the terms of agreement” thing was obviously a bogus charge that someone came up with so he could prosecute the despicable piece of shit. I understand that some “online harassment” crime has been introduced so they won’t have to use this trick (and come back without a conviction) next time.
Yes, that was a bad idea to begin with, since who knows for what else they could have used this bogus charge next time if it had worked. But not knowing why she wasn’t sentenced, we can’t really know whether it could be tried successfully in the future.
And by the way, that’s a shame that they couldn’t nail this waste of DNA.