Did Google Defense help Ray Guhn beat Obscenity charge?

[ShellyCrash]

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?

[munki]

Did he beat the charge, or plea bargain it out of existence?

[Tickler]

Originally Posted by ShellyCrash

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?

Larry Walters managed to get the size of the community redefined after the DAs pulled their normal BS of having the trial in an anti-porn area.
http://www.avn.com/index.cfm?objectI...C383BC20091D03

I also mentoned to Larry Walters a few years ago to take a look at some studies that show +70% of hard drives contain porn. Start telling the jury that 9 out of 12 of them surf for porn even if they won't admit it.

The MaxHardcore battle is also trying to redefine the definition of community standards to be the people that actually look at the porn, and I think that will eventually pan out.

The GoogleTrends will be another example of hard facts to show that the current "community standards" definitions(pre-intenet) are no longer valid for the World-Wide-Web.

[lookatthis]

the goverment is unfair

[marketsmart]

Ray Guhn didnt beat shit.. The govt got him to accept 3-5 years in a state prison..

Who cares whether it was for obscenity or for money laundering, at the end of the day the guy is going to jail for 3-5...

[baddog]

Originally Posted by munki

Did he beat the charge, or plea bargain it out of existence?

pretty sure the latter.

[kane]

This defense has been used before with success. There was a case in Provo, Utah a while back where a guy was brought up on obscenity charges for renting a few porn movies from his video store. He only had about 18 titles and kept them behind the counter away from minors, but was dragged into court on them. His first trial ended in a hung jury. During the second trial his attorney was able to find out how may pay per view movies were rented in Provo over cable and satellite and how that compared to the national average. It turns out Provo was renting pay per view porn at 3 times the national average for a city of that size. His attorney argued that the city can't be outraged if they are renting 3 times the porn other cities that size are. He was found innocent.

So in future cases I won't be at all surprised to see this information used.

[Ayla_SquareTurtle]

Originally Posted by Tickler

Start telling the jury that 9 out of 12 of them surf for porn even if they won't admit it.

In many cases I'm sure 100% of the jury has seen or watched porn at least once in their lives, and realistically, a few of them are probably very frequent watchers. I've always wondered if people get convicted of obscenity for the sole reason that the majority of the jury members are too fucking scared to admit in front of 11 others that they've been wanking off to porn their whole lives. I mean, really, do they go in there and just play dumb? "Oh my god, breasts and vaginas on video! I've never seen anything like this before, ever! Have you guys....?"