Do you own a copy of "Lolita" by Nabokov? Then you're a pedophile!

That seems to be the implication of the Australian court judgment below

A MAN found guilty of possessing child porn in the form of a fictional story about an adult male and pre-pubescent girl, has had his conviction thrown out. Last September, a District Court jury in Brisbane found Don Gordon Campbell guilty of knowingly possessing child exploitation material and he was sentenced to a 12 month intensive correction order. But today the Court of Appeal said the Crown had not proved Campbell ''knowingly possessed'' the material which was found on his computer.

In a unanimous judgment the court quashed the conviction and entered a verdict of not guilty. Justice Peter Dutney said the prosecution had failed to link Campbell to ownership of the files and there was not sufficient evidence to sustain a guilty verdict.

The court heard that police went to Campbell's home after a tip off and found five computers on which there were two copies of the story. A computer expert said one version of the story had been downloaded from the internet and the second version had been copied across from that file.

The case was the latest in which there was confusion about the definition of "child exploitation material" and "possession" in child porn offences. Before the original trial there was legal argument about whether a fictional story constituted child exploitation material. The judge ruled it was not necessary for the offending material to depict a real person as long as that person was a child under the age of 16.

The Court of Appeal found the judge was correct in finding the story was child pornography but said the Crown had not proved its case on the "knowingly possessing" component.

SOURCE

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don't forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me (John Ray) here

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