Merlin wrote in alt.fan.frank.mccoy on Thursday 28 February 2008 16:15
Post by MerlinWhat about the tens of thousands of porn sites that have a
gazillion links to every kind of obscenity imaginable, in full color?
What it is I am not understanding about how that is different than
what Frank McCoy is accused of?
Well, right now, to the best of my knowledge, it is _not_ illegal to post
links; at least, this has not yet been tested out in court. I see two
separate potential scenarios:
1) The authorities want to crack down on 'obscenity', but the laws
covering links were drafted long before the invention of the web.
They may be using this as a test case; if Frank is convicted, then this
jurisprudence can be applied more broadly to cover the larger range of
'adult' materials out there.
2) Due to First Amendment issues, the authorities may be unsure if they
can obtain a conviction on purely text materials; this may be why they
are using an obscure, little known provision of the obscenity laws to
try to convict Frank.
Take your pick--only the authorities know for sure what their motivations
are. There may even be /other/ scenarios I haven't thought of--only they
know for sure. We'll just have to see what happens in the court case.
Baal <***@Usenet.org>
PGP Key: http://wwwkeys.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x1E92C0E8
PGP Key Fingerprint: 40E4 E9BB D084 22D5 3DE9 66B8 08E3 638C 1E92 C0E8
Retired Lecturer, Encryption and Data Security, Pedo U, Usenet Campus
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"Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?" -- "Who will watch the Watchmen?"
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