What is a website?/Englischer Richter ratlos?

English judge asks ‘What is a website?’
This has been widely reported and even blogged, but not yet by me.

Judge Peter Openshaw, 59, brought an Internet terror trial to a halt when he admitted he struggled to cope with basic terms like “website”.
The Judge said he was completely lost by the terminology during the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.
He told stunned prosecutors at Woolwich Crown Court in south east London: “The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is.”
The Judge is hearing a trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.

This sounds a bit fishy to me – just one of those simple stories that go round the world. What if the judge does know what a website is, but finds the detailed testimony on the relation of website hosting to criminal offences confusing?

And indeed, it looks as if he does know what a website is and was trying to get the evidence simplified for the jury:

But the Judicial Communications Office (JCO) later released a statement insisting Judge Openshaw was “entirely computer literate”.
It said the judge’s comments, in the fifth week of a trial largely based on computer generated evidence, had been taken out of context.
He had been simply clarifying the evidence presented in an easily understandable form, for all those in court, the JCO statement continued.
“Mr Justice Openshaw is entirely computer literate and indeed has taken notes on his own computer in court for many years,” the statement said.

Now the Judicial Communications Office is new to me. I don’t think they have one of those in Germany.

The JCO was created in April 2005 to enhance public confidence in judicial office holders in England and Wales. It provides external and internal communications support.

The JCO supports all judges, both full- and part-time, together with tribunal members and magistrates in England and Wales. Here’s its statement (it doesn’t appear to have a website of its own!)

Via Slaw

5 thoughts on “What is a website?/Englischer Richter ratlos?

  1. I think it’s great idea to record time electronically. You can even run several tasks at the same time, you just have to remember to turn the program on and off. This doesn’t explain why I’ve been recording time for several years but hardly ever actually did the summing-up or learnt how to produce a report in order to make sense of the data. I suppose at least I could if I wanted to (this is why the simple program appeals to me, because it will show me all the week at once without me having to think much).

  2. Hey there, thanx for mentioning mite (disclaimer: I’m one of the founders). Nothing bad happens to your data if your browser crashes. The data is stored safely in our database and we do have daily backups on another server as well – so nothing to worry about.

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