Judge Doesn't Know What a Web Site is

An anonymous reader writes "A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet. Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals. "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is". he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws. Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum." An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts.""

Comments

Re:Older Generations

[jdigriz]

If he's 59 now, that means the microcomputer revolution started when he was 27-29. And the worldwide web started when he was 44. Perhaps sometime in the intervening time he could have troubled himself to learn a little about the *biggest* advance in the storage and dissemination of knowledge since the movable type printing press?

I know, I know, he was busy hearing cases. Judgin' ain't easy.

Re:Maybe he should recuse himself.

[trewornan]

"Jazz musicians . . . of some notoriety my Lord"

For those that don't know this was a famous exchange in a bank robbery trial.

Re:Generation Gap

[dbIII]

Honestly, how many people do you know, age 59 and older, that can participate in a technological conversation?

Several, including one that is 70+ who can tell me in detail why he thinks Intel's current CPU architecture is corner cutting crap and who actually did repair electonic medical equipment while he was hospitalised using only a nurses hairpin. Not bad for an electrical engineer who left university before solid state electronics moved out of the lab. Many of the technical folk use their retirement to get more up to date than they had a chance to do before - for example there are old woodworkers moving into putting together their own numerically controlled tools that had not a great deal of computer experience before.

Re:wow...

[fishbowl]

>Unbelievable...

Until the *one* discovery request that receives *only* the closed file from the boxes at the off-site facility, 25 years from now.
Then it makes sense. Most of the litigation I was involved in (IANALBIHSLAWITF), had documentation spanning a period of about 1912 to about 1985.

Funny? That's effing SCARY!

[Opportunist]

Here is a person, supposedly judging people. Concerning a much larger crime (at least still larger) than anything that we find "usually" connected to the net, like copyright, domain grabbing or slander. We're talking about whether people get their hides skinned for being terrorists, using the net to conspire.

And here's a judge who should come to a verdict. A judge who admits now he doesn't even have the foggiest idea what's going down in this case.

I don't hold that against the judge. Far not! I respect him a lot for having the courage to actually admit he doesn't know it. How many don't have a clue about new technology and still issue verdicts, not knowing at all just WHAT they just did?

Proof? Look at some verdicts concerning the net!

Over here, a judge would simply call in what we call an "expert adviser". These are people, sworn in like judges, with expertise in a relevant field, from IT over linguistics to things like archaeology. For pretty much every field in science our legal apparatus affords itself quite a staff of experts. Yes, they cost.

But they're worth it, believe me that!

That may be a billing issue

[Anonymous Coward]

They may need hard copies to bill for interactions, like, if a client emails them and they answer it, they charge for that... but need a hard copy to make it look more like "work." Also, some places charge clients for every xerox they make, so it stands to reason they might chage for every page printed too,

Re:Good

[bears]

The judge may know perfectly well what a website is.

My father, a now retired British judge, pointed out to me years ago that sometimes a judge asks what appears to be a worryingly ignorant question, not because (s)he doesn't know the answer, but because (s)he suspects that some jury members don't know and will not want to appear stupid by asking. This way the judge can be sure they get an explanation, at the potential cost of a little personal flack.

Dad is a happy net user, by the way, and knows exactly what a web site is.

Re:wow...

[thetartanavenger]

"because the jurors wouldn't understand the complex issues at stake". If judges are equally deficient in understanding, then really - what's the point of removing an ancient right to trial by jury? The difference I see is that if the judge does not understand the term, he can stop and ask for it to be explained. Whereas a jury, if not unable to do this, could be less likely to. If the jury, consisting of (let's face it) common people, might not understand it, a supposedly much smarter judge will have more of a chance to understand it. It is also alot easier to teach one person to understand than a whole jury. Then again, this could also be considered as being alot easier to convince one person that your viewpoint is correct, and therefore could detriment the case, hence the point of a jury.