Legal Juice
If you thought you could find an expert on anything, you would be wrong. As reported by HurriyetDailyNews.com:
A Turkish judge has taken full responsibility in a pornography case while acquitting the investigation’s suspects after the court failed to find an “expert on artificial vaginas.”
You’re probably wondering why the judge would need such an expert, aren’t you?
Daily Hürriyet learned that the 26-year-old suspect, a businessman identified as Emre Ş, started to import realistic vaginas and other sex toys into Turkey two years ago. The second suspect, 29-year-old Kadir P., published the photographs of the products on his website for marketing purposes.
The Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), however, took action against the men.
Yes, action had to be taken. If not, who knows. Those things could end up taking over … their owners’ …
The TİB, which was granted the authority to monitor Internet users and block websites and their content without court permission last year, filed criminal complaints against both men. After the investigation, the prosecutor asked the court to sentence both men to between six months and three years in jail, beside a hefty fine, claiming that they committed the crime of “publicizing obscene graphics, texts or remarks.”
That’s not nothing. But …
The Criminal Court of First Instance at the Anadolu Courthouse in Istanbul acquitted both suspects on July 1.
According to the ruling seen by daily Hürriyet, the judge stressed that he evaluated the artificial vagina “with his own general knowledge” because the court failed to find an expert whose specialty covers the domain.
As such, the judge added, Turkey’s criminal law does not specify which products should be considered obscene, which led him to issue the ruling that acquitted the suspects, who had imported the sex toys legally and advertised them with a parental advisory on their marketing website.
Phew. Back to business. Speaking of business …
More than 81,000 websites, most of them pornographic, are currently blocked in Turkey. According to the monitoring website Engelli Web, 93.6 percent of these websites were blocked by the TİB without a court order.
No court order? Sounds a little extra-judicial. Here’s the source.