The Pirate Party's Dubious Understanding of the Sentence Against Former MP Tauss for Child Pornography

As reported e.g. on "The Local" and "Die Zeit", a Karlsruhe district court (Landgericht Karlsruhe) handed former Social Democratic parliamentarian Jörg Tauss a 15-month suspended sentence on Friday, 28 May 2010, for the possession of child pornography, which Tauss said he would appeal and raged about a "crazed prosecutor" and a "political and medial prosecution". While the defence did not deny that Tauss possessed the illegal material and instead alleged he’d had it for work-related purposes for research about the scene only, the judges were convinced that the 56-year-old had illegally possessed some 260 photos and 40 video clips containing child pornography between May 2007 and January 2009, since “the overview shows that Tauss was not travelling through the virtual child pornography scene in fulfilment of his political duties, but out of private reasons” as Chief Judge Udo Scholl explained. As to Tauss’ claims of special parliamentary exemption from the law, the Judge said that such claims were invalid even if Tauss was an expert in online criminality, since "the same powers are valid for all parliamentarians" and the "status equality forbids special rights for certain parliamentarians". In September 2009 the German Bundestag annulled Tauss’ parliamentary immunity, clearing the way for prosecutors to press charges and Tauss left the centre-left Social Democratic Party, for which he has been an MP since 1994, after the investigation against him began. He then became the first and only member of the Pirate Party (Piratenpartei) in the Bundestag until the general election in September 2009. The German Pirate Party, who sees itself as representing those in the information technology community, campaigning for privacy protection as well as the loosening of intellectual property rights, such as copyright and patent protection, declared on Friday that the party would make no decisions about Tauss’ membership until they reviewed the court’s verdict. In an official statement following the verdict the Pirate Party did not find it adequate to comment on the evidence against its "honorary member" or the harm such practise brings about, but instead called the trial a “bad sign of public prejudgement” and said that “questionable press work” by public prosecutors had severely hindered the rule of law and forced the Pireate Party to defend themselve against "nasty accusations" of being a "paedophile party". In fact, many self-declared campaigners of internet freedom consider the (suspended) verdict against Jörg Tauss too harsh, showing a dubious legal understanding of parts of the free internet community. Whereas Pirate Party spokesman Simon Lange said that "we trust that he will make the right decision for himself and the party” and that "it is up to him if he wants to leave the party", Tauss meanwhile voluntarily left the Pirate Party in ordert to, as he said, avert any damage to the party. This step, however, could in fact damage the party even more, since…