Perhaps not undeserved, but certainly unjust!

OK, I know, as an Englishman I do still sort of think of Oz as being one giant prison-island. At the same time though, even the lurid media descriptions of this man's "crimes" (below) make it hard really to understand why he's now going to be cooling his heels in some antipodean slammer for 10 months.

Child-porn downloader 'didn't realise it was a crime'

Christine Flatley
January 19, 2009 02:15pm

A FATHER who downloaded 30,000 child pornography images and videos did not realise it was against the law, a court has been told.

Brian Raymond Bowden, 44, was surprised when police charged him with using a carriage service to access child pornography and knowingly possessing child pornographic material, the Brisbane District Court was told today

Prosecutor Anthony Gett said Bowden told police he knew it was a crime to abuse children, but did not realise he was breaking the law by possessing images of such abuse.

The court was told police found almost 28,000 images of children being abused on Bowden's computer when they searched his home at Carina in Brisbane in July 2007.

Bowden also had more than 4700 videos stored on the computer's hard drive.

Mr Gett said some of the videos and images featured babies being abused, and others featured sadistic acts and bestiality.

The court was told Bowden had downloaded the files between March 2005 and July 2007.

The father of two pleaded guilty today to the charges and was sentenced to two and a half years' jail.

He will serve 10 months behind bars before being released on a good behaviour bond.

[heraldsun.com.au]

In my opinion, either pornography and sodomy should be completely legal or they should be completely illegal. Personally, as it happens, I'd be more than happy to go along with banning all of it. But there is genuinely something horrifically unjust about the way that such things are currently completely legal for some people but not at all legal, and with stiff penalties attached, for others.

And both sides of any debate over morality and "free speech" ought to be able to agree on that.