[Asterisk-biz] Criminal Liability (I know there are attorneys on this list)

[Greg Broiles]

On 5/12/05, Michael Welter <mike at introspect.com> wrote:
> First:  I am not casting dispersions upon anyone on this list.  However,
> I have a what-if question based on queries I have received off-list
> during the past month:

Are you looking for free legal service, or is this an RFP?

The "I was thinking about making some money by working in the child
sex industry" angle doesn't exactly set you up as an especially
compelling candidate for pro bono efforts. I do some pro bono work but
it's typically on behalf of either people or principles I find
sympathetic, and so far, you're batting .000 with me.

If you are planning to use the answer to your question(s) in a
for-profit business, doesn't it make a certain amout of sense to
expect to pay for the answers? If you want a real, live, honest-to-God
bet-your-freedom-on-it answer to the questions, wouldn't you like to
think that the person who answered them actually spent some time
reviewing the statutes and the caselaw, rather than just giving you an
off-the-cuff answer? Do you realize that if you end up convicted of a
sex crime that you're likely to be required to register, for the rest
of your life, as a sex offender? Are you really going to gamble with
10-20+ years in prison and sex offender registration based on free
legal advice from some guy on a mailing list? Is the amount of money
you can make from monkeying around with this sort of thing worth that
kind of risk?

Public mailing lists are awful places to ask for legal advice because
the answers you get may not be favorable - and they'll be indexed by
search engines along with your question, and there isn't even a shred
of an argument that you've got an expectation of
privacy/confidentiality, such that you could argue the communications
were covered by attorney-client privilege.

So let's say that someone responds to your question, and says "Yeah,
you've got some potential liability", and you decide to go ahead with
the project anyway. You've just eliminated one of the arguments you
might have wanted to make either during trial, plea bargaining, or
sentencing - that you didn't realize your conduct was illegal, or you
didn't realize what sort of traffic your network was carrying.

(Ignorance of the law is not a defense, per se - but it doesn't hurt
if the violation is a technical/non-obvious one, and you're trying to
talk a prosecutor into turning a felony charge into a plea to a
misdemeanor, for example.)

If you really want your questions answered, my suggestion would be to
find a local criminal defense attorney who practices in federal court
- then walk into their office and ask them your questions in person,
and be prepared to write a check with four or five digits on the left
side of the decimal point to get your answer. Your questions - and the
answers - will be clearly protected by attorney-client privilege, and
will not be stored in places (like your hard disk, or Google's cache) 
that are likely to be accessible to the prosecution if you find
yourself in hot water.

-- 
Greg Broiles, JD, EA
gbroiles at gmail.com (Lists only. Not for confidential communications.)
Law Office of Gregory A. Broiles
San Jose, CA