Ray Guhn may have pleaded guilty to several charges but he was able to walk away from the obscenity charge.
I know the case wrapped up in a plea bargain the other day, but I was reading this story on the atty's planned defense on the obscenity charges that should peak all our interest:
NY Times: What?s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer
From the article:
"In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like ?orgy? than for ?apple pie? or ?watermelon.? The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics ? and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm."
You can't expect someone to martyr themselves through a vicious court battle with their freedom on the line, but I do have hope that maybe the word will get out and this could be used by other attys fighting similar battles against obscenty charges, like the one Max Hardcore is losing locally here in Tampa.
What do you guys think? Am I the only one that thinks geotargeted Google search popularity data could help in the defence of people being charged with obcenity?