Re: Reversal of Porn Conviction for German CompuServe Exec

Joachim Feise (jfeise@ics.uci.edu)
Fri, 19 Nov 1999 19:24:07 -0800


Karee Swift wrote:
>
> Any of you remember when this hit the news a while back? Its another one of
> those interesting facts when courts look back on their decisions and find
> out which argument really made sense. (As opposed to which argument was the
> best political bet)

By the time of the closing arguments of original case, even the AG who brought
the case to court in the first place was arguing against a conviction.
The problem was that the judge didn't understand anything of this new thing
called "online services".
This time around, I guess the judge was better educated. But actually, I can
see some people arguing with political pressure: Bavaria is THE high-tech
region in Germany, and although the Bavarian government (which is in power
since the 50ies) is very conservative, their conversativism doesn't extend to
the point of driving businesses out of their state. Other German states,
especially Saxonia in the former East Germany try to bypass Bavaria in the
quest of creating a high-tech industry, and they try to lure the tech companies
to their locations. Saxonia already convinced AMD and Siemens (headquartered
in Bavaria) to build new chip plants in their state.

-Joe