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It's funny.  Laugh. Government The Courts The Internet News

Judge Doesn't Know What a Web Site is 519

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.""
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Judge Doesn't Know What a Web Site is

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  • Geez (Score:5, Funny)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:31PM (#19154193) Homepage Journal
    Have Ted Stevens explain it to him
  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DoofusOfDeath ( 636671 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:32PM (#19154205)
    The judge wasn't so proud as to pretend understanding and then issue a potentially unjust ruling.

    Would that all judges had the same strength of character in this regard.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by noz ( 253073 )
      Nah he shoulda just gone back to sleep.
    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:41PM (#19154299)
      Exactly. Rather than bashing him on this we should be praising him for knowing his limits. The reason why organizations like the RIAA, MPAA, NSA, HS, etc are able to get away with so much is because of unacknowledged ignorance. I doubt any significant number of judges ruling on internet law actually know what's going on, instead ruling how they *think* they should.
      • by Estanislao Martínez ( 203477 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @09:43PM (#19155723) Homepage

        Nearly every reply I see here falls into one of two categories:

        1. "Wow, what a stupid judge! He doesn't know what a website is, like we teh smaert peoples do!!!"
        2. "No, the guy is wise to admit his limitation, and ask us, the smaert peoples who know what a website is, to tell him."
        The tacit assumption is that it's perfectly clear what a "web site" is.

        Now, of course, I'm going to call that assumption into question. What is a web site? How do you tell where one web site ends, and where another starts? Is Geocities a web site? Is it rather a collection of web sites? Is it both, simultaneously? How does this decision interact with other legal reasoning that may be relevant to the case? What criteria ought to be applied in the kind of case he's handling?

        The judge's supposed "admission" of "ignorance" could, for all that we know from TFA, not be because the judge has no concept of what a website is; it could be because his concept of what a website is is good enough for using, um, web sites, but not good enough for deciding this particular case.

      • Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)

        by bears ( 21313 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @03:00AM (#19157869) Homepage
        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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by babbling ( 952366 )
      Unfortunately I think a lot of people are going to miss this very good point.

      Yes, it's bad that a judge isn't more familiar with the internet, but he could probably have bluffed his way through the case and that would have been much worse.

      I think it's quite clear that many judges and politicians are doing their job without necessarily understanding the consequences of rulings or laws that they are implementing due to a lack of understanding when it comes to technology. It is far better for them to admit a l
    • Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)

      by permaculture ( 567540 ) on Thursday May 17, 2007 @02:34AM (#19157717) Homepage Journal
      from 'Not the Nine O'Clock News'

      Lawyer: I intend to prove that my client is completely innocent of the charges of theft of which he is accused.
      In evidence, I shall produce receipts given to me by my client as proof of purchase for the three articles allegedly stolen.
      This one for the digital watch...

      Judge: A digital watch? What on earth is a digital watch?

      Lawyer: Sorry, m'lud. A digital watch is a watch worked by microelectronics.
      I will also be producing a receipt for the automatic video recorder...

      Judge: Automatic video recorder?

      Lawyer: It's a machine that records television programmes on special tapes.

      Judge: How fascinating. What will they think of next? Proceed.

      Lawyer: Thank you m'lud. Finally, I will produce in this court a receipt for my client's "deluxe model inflatable woman" -whatever that is.

      Judge: The deluxe is the one with the real hair and the lifelike sister!
  • Give him credit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shabbs ( 11692 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:32PM (#19154207)
    Give him credit for admitting he didn't understand. Clearly he needs to be able to understand the concept in order to rule on the case. What are the options when a judge just doesn't understand? Do we need a "technical" set of judges to handle these types of cases?

    Cheers.
    • Re:Give him credit (Score:5, Interesting)

      by smilindog2000 ( 907665 ) <bill@billrocks.org> on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:45PM (#19154355) Homepage
      Go easy on him, guys... it's not easy for guys practically in retirement to learn about these new fangled computers. I recently had to teach my father-in-law how to read e-mail. Apparently, he'd already gone through all of his immediate family, who had given up in disgust. Here's literally how the phone-call went:

      me: Open up your e-mail program and tell me what you see.
      him: How do I do that?
      me: Click on the start menu, and select the program that has 'mail' in the name.
      him: I don't have a start menu.
      me: It's on the lower left corner of your screen.
      him: Ok, I see it! Now what?
      me: Click on it.
      him: With what?
      me: Your mouse
      him: I don't have a mouse
      me: It's that white thing on the right with two buttons. Push it around. See the cursor move?
      him: I see the mouse, but I don't have a cursor.
      me: Yes, you do.
      him: No, I don't
      me: Yes, you do.
      him: Oh! I see it!
      me: Now click on the Start button. Do this by dragging the cursor over it, and pressing the left button on the mouse ...

      It took pretty much a whole Saturday afternoon to talk him through it. It was one of the most tiring experiences of my life. The Judge is probably just like him. BTW, my father-in-law is a darned smart dude and well respected doctor. He just hates computers (or at least he did until he learned to use e-mail).
      • by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:52PM (#19154461)
        He's ready to retire and take up photography again. And he LOVES the digital options. He's already setup his own website and uses Photoshop. He knows more about digital cameras than I do.

        It's not age. It's interest.

        He's found that his old interest has taken a new turn with computerization and he has spent his spare time learning all about it.
    • Re:Give him credit (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @08:56PM (#19155197) Homepage Journal

      Do we need a "technical" set of judges to handle these types of cases?
      No, but we might need judges who live in the same world as
      • the people they're judging
      • the people who write the laws they're applying
      It's ok for people to not know what a website is. I'm not going to uh .. judge them. It's not ok for first-world-country judges to not know.

      But yeah, it's good that he asked instead of faking.

    • Re:Give him credit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by misenplis2 ( 1103323 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @09:45PM (#19155751)
      >

      No. We don't need a special magistrate or specialized referee. No judge or jury can ever know everything about everything. A judge who happened to know a great deal about websites, HTML, Apache, LAMP, Perl, and what-have-you might not know anything about Listeria monocytogenes and ice-cream manufacture, and have to preside over a case about food poisoning (and death) allegedly caused by ice cream. The next case over which the judge might have to preside could be about the failure of a large generating turbine caused by a wear block about an inch square falling out of a recess and into the air stream, going through the turbine blades. The next might be about the quality of paint on some water faucet handles. The next about whether there was intent to create a joint work when author A wrote a study about the effect of something author B wrote, and included an appendix of author B's previously unpublished work. Judges don't need to be psychologists about intent, or polymer chemists, or experts on the standard of care in mechanical drawing and turbine design, or microbiologists or food processing experts -- or ever have seen a web page.

      What judges DO need to be is educable. It is the job of the lawyers to educate the judge (or other fact-finder). It is the job of the lawyers to be sure that the fact-finder gets all the facts and concepts needed to decide. The fact-finders shouldn't need to know anything in advance about any given subject; a good lawyer will see to it that the fact-finders are educated about everything they need to understand. The fact that the judge had to ask is mainly, above all else, evidence that a lawyer was failing to do his or her job adequately. Kudos to the judge for telling the lawyers, in effect, "you haven't given been doing a good job of teaching yet; please start doing it better."
         
  • *whew* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:33PM (#19154215)
    Thank god I'm not the only one...
  • by gardyloo ( 512791 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:33PM (#19154219)
    "Heh. Totally pwned that prosecutor. ZOMG! Ponies!"
  • defined (Score:5, Funny)

    by wizardforce ( 1005805 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:34PM (#19154223) Journal
    website: noun: a doorway to a series of tubes
  • Older Generations (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AugustZephyr ( 989775 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:35PM (#19154235)
    Some might say that 59 isn't that old, but the fact remains that there are still plenty of people that grew up before the computer and/or internet revolution. Eventually, however, having some knowledge of technical terms will be inevitable.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jdigriz ( 676802 )
      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: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by malsdavis ( 542216 )
      Unfortunately, I've seen far younger judges who wouldn't know what a website is.

      Most Chambers here in Britain (the offices where collections of Barristers work - self-employed lawyers who speak in court but not to clients) and even some solicitors firms (like U.S. lawyers but they can't speak in court) require applicants to submit pen written application forms. Compared to the usual cut & paste exercise which accompanies applying for jobs, this becomes an extremely annoying process after writing a few.

      T
    • by tacokill ( 531275 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @08:44PM (#19155077)
      Absolutely. However, I think the gap is MUCH larger than we think it is. I am certain all of us have had that, "are you really serious?" moment when talking to someone over 50 and the gap between the generations is particularly large when it comes to computers and technology.

      Every younger generation thinks the older generation is clueless. I understand that. I just think in this case, the gap between the two is much much larger than for previous generations. Perhaps those who had electricity vs those who didn't might be comparable but it is not the same as the baby-boomers vs. depression era folks.

      Don't forget how big of a change computers and the "information society" is to the world as a whole. Nothing like this has ever been seen or experienced by mankind before. It is truly revolutionary. We are the first generation to "get it".
  • Good for the judge (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:41PM (#19154297)
    True story:

    I once was in a conversation with a highly paid Ivy League-educated lawyer. Somehow (don't ask) the fact that the sun's surface temperature is thousands of degrees came up. The lawyer said, "oh, is that how it stays up, then?" No one knew what she meant. "Well, is that why the sun doesn't fall down, because hot things rise?" she continued. Stunned silence. Then everyone speaking at once about, you know, the copernican view of the universe. The highly paid lawyer was not embarrassed. Instead she asked a lot of questions. They started out stupid, but over the course of 15 minutes of intense questioning she picked
    up pretty much everything I knew about solar and planetary astronomy (which is a lot). By the end she was asking really clever questions I couldn't answer.

    Lesson I learned: you get to be a highly paid lawyer by being smart, not by knowing anything in particular. And I would happily have her defend me in a trial.
  • by Dasher42 ( 514179 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:43PM (#19154327)
    Just try looking up "person" in Black's Law Dictionary. The wording is important, as specific terms mean specific strings of legal precedents. Judges recuse themselves for good reasons all the time, and this guy did the right thing. Would you rather he'd judged a case with vague user-end impressions?

    I wish everyone who wasn't up to an important job would say so.
  • In his defense (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ElDuque ( 267493 ) <adw5@lehigh . e du> on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:45PM (#19154361)
    Looks like everyone took the sensationalist bait on this.

    Article is pretty light on details but it seems like the judge is trying to understand what a website actually "is"...it seems like an issue in this case is where the defendants' activities took place.

    So perhaps he realized he needed to know more than "a window that comes up on your computer" as far as what a website is. It doesn't seem unreasonable for a 59-year-old in a completely non-technical job to not know how a website is put together; "what is a website?" is a feasible way to ask not only "describe this thing to me", but also "what makes up this thing?". Maybe he was asking the latter.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by lawpoop ( 604919 )
      He also seemed to be asking the difference between a web site and a message board. That might be a little nuanced even for the computer-using non-expert.
  • by multipartmixed ( 163409 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @07:45PM (#19154367) Homepage
    Look, nobody expects judges to be experts in everything. In particular, nobody expects judges to be knowledgeable about something that was INVENTED when they were in their 40s and was really a fad-for-young-people until a relatively short time ago.

    What we expect judges to do is make fair rulings.

    How can a judge who doesn't know anything about web sites and online forums make reasonable rulings? Well, he can't. And he knows this. So, the judge -- and MOST JUDGES -- have two choices:

      - Learn enough to make a fair ruling
      - Fake it and pick the lawyer with the nicest tie

    Now, it has been fairly obvious that COMPLETELY CLUESS judges are making case law around the world. That is quite clearly BAD.

    A judge willing to admit he lacks the deep understanding required to make a ruling, and taking steps to work around/solve the problem? NO PROBLEM, in my opinion, as long as he comes to the table with an open mind, impartiality, and a good sense of jurisprudence.

    That said -- I think the judge should spend a few hours participating in IRC, reading bash.org, taking part in a forum about something he likes (maybe his car), checking out tubgirl, some pr0n, masturbating and so forth. Then maybe he will actually understand the medium. Somebody (prosecutor) should suggest that.
    • by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @08:23PM (#19154855)

      That said -- I think the judge should spend a few hours participating in IRC, reading bash.org, taking part in a forum about something he likes (maybe his car), checking out tubgirl, some pr0n, masturbating and so forth. Then maybe he will actually understand the medium. Somebody (prosecutor) should suggest that.
      I know that Brit law isn't supposed to be quite the 'fight' between prosecution and defense as US law is. But if I were the defense, I would totally push for the judge to do exactly what you say - once he actually sees that 99.99% of people on the web are just bullshitting, the prosecution would have a dificult time proving any sort of serious intent to "incite terrorism" (wtf is that anyway?) on the part of the defendents.
  • by vishbar ( 862440 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @08:17PM (#19154795)

    What?? A government official makes comments that shows he knows nothing of a particular technology that is vital to him performing his job? Wow....good thing this kinda stuff never happens in the USA!

  • by wikinerd ( 809585 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @08:41PM (#19155049) Journal
    Here's a good judge. It's very professional to admit that he doesn't understand something.

    Perhaps one would think that it would be easy to explain what a web site is. However, the definition of a website might not be so easy as you may think. Judges, like computer scientists, often have to tackle with very fine details and seek answers to subtle questions. For example: Should every website use the HTTP protocol? If yes, what if there is a law saying terrorist websites are illegal but the defendands used a slightly customised HTTP version? Furthermore, should every website include webpages? What if the law prohibits terrorist webpages, but the defendands just placed some gzip or pdf files on a public indexed directory served by Apache httpd? Is a non-indexed directory served by Apache a website? Can a website on the Principality of Sealand be prosecuted under US law? If you tunnel HTTP traffic through another protocol, would this qualify as website data? Is a website a publication? Is it still a publication if you open a website on a non-networked server? If you create a website unreadable by humans but readable by computers, would this qualify as a publication? Is a website that was online only for 3 minutes a kind of publication? Is the printout of a website still a website? Would the browser cache be regarded as copying potentially copyrighted material? If a very sucky webserver can only handle 3 requests per minute and you hit your Refresh/Reload button 4 times within a minute bringing the server down, would this be a DoS attack?
  • Today.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by clamothe ( 704740 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @08:47PM (#19155097)
    Secretary: "Sir, you got slashdotted." Judge, with curiosity: "Slashdotted?" Secretary: "Yes sir, it's a news website" Judge: "A website? um...?"
  • When I was in college, I took an environmental law class. The guy teaching it used to work county public health or whatnot and had a few good stories.

    One of the stories was to show how judges are sometimes in the position to interpret laws and regulations that are outside their scope of knowledge. One story goes that a case was about dumping of hazardous waste. The waste wasn't specifically listed as hazardous, but there are other procedures to test the compound's toxicity - such as exposing a certain species of fish to the compound for X days and seeing how they are doing at the end. If the fish are dead, then it's pretty obvious that the compound is toxic.

    In this case, the fish toxicity testing data was presented to the judge and it went something as follows:
    Judge: And do we have any of these fish in our county?
    Answer: No, we don't have any of these fish in our county.
    Judge: Then what do we have to worry about?

    Grump
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @09:10PM (#19155327)
    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!
  • by EdelFactor19 ( 732765 ) <<ude.ipr.mula> <ta> <nietslede.mada>> on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @09:18PM (#19155433)
    Yes this guy should be praised for his honesty of his utter ineptitude. What he should do is recuse himself from the case for someone who knows something. And he should be thanked and rewarded. He should then go take some courses to learn something about the internet. Meanwhile judges who don't admit that they don't know what it is should be hunted down and fired or noted that they are inelligible to serve on any technological case.

    Contrary to another poster I don't believe that a lack of being knowledgeble in the field brings about true justice. It means that such a person could easily be confused and misled by the guck that the expert and lawyers present to them. It has nothing to do with bias for the justice side of it, it has to do with not being competant enough on the topic to resolve the issue. More time and money will be wasted in trial getting him a clue then actually on the legal matter at hand. How is that good for anybody? It isn't.

    If you ask me this is one more sign that serious reform is needed in the judge system, and the whole "tenure for life" good old boys network of judges is the first target. Though not neccessarily true, they are the most likely to be completely ignorant of technology and to have never bothered to learn what the internet is. What's worse is I'd bet that these are same morons who are letting all the legislation regarding to technology through. I say let's test their general knowledge and have endorsements for highly technical cases involving things such as various facets technology. Why not, they have to study tax law if they want to deal with taxes, they should have to study technology and IP law if they want to rule on stuff with that. From the tests results issue endorsements; if they can't pass a test on technology they can't be assigned a case that hinges upon internet technology very simple.

    Would you let a foot doctor give you advice on heart surgery? No. And it's not a superiority thing either, I wouldn't let the cardiac surgeon tell me how to treat my feet other. As long as the issue is dealt with respectfully and judges are forth coming let them stay in the system. But when judges are found to be presiding over cases they dont have the proper knowledge of that should be treated just as unethically as a lawyer neglecting to properly represent a client.

    My real question, if he's forthcoming enough to admit his lack of knowledge why not be forthright enough to remove yourself from the case to be replaced by someone who knows it to speed up the case. In our country at least I have a right to a speedy trial, which definately does not include educating a judge on the internet.

    It's far time judges, teachers and other public officials were held to the same standards that other workers are in regards to time. Time goes on and new technologies come along as well as new techniques and trends. To be a viable worker we have to keep up with these things, why don't they have to? The tenure systems are crippling us.
  • responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @09:25PM (#19155547)
    The internet is such a central aspect of life these days the judge is remiss in not having informed himself of at least the basics.
  • I respect him (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mkcmkc ( 197982 ) on Wednesday May 16, 2007 @09:31PM (#19155615)
    Wish we had a President who could admit his ignorance.

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