Where to begin?  It's quite a long story so I'll try not to ramble too much.

I've been watching satellite porn since '96 when the only dedicated porn channels were Rendezvous and Eurotica, SCT had just started up but the smart card needed to view the channell was embedded in their own dedicated decoder and you also needed a receiver that could receive a 'clamped' signal, so I, like most people stuck to what could be received with a D2-Mac decoder.

I was always lending or giving tapes to friend, neighbours and family and at the end of '97 I decided to start making multiple copies with the sole intention of selling the copies I planned to make.

First of all I purchased official viewing cards for SCT, Rendevous/Eurotica and Eros after first making sure that were no plans in the pipeline to proscribe the channels mentioned. Then I bought 8 Toshiba VCR's and one Panasonic VCR, a title generator, a video processor, a Kramer distributor/amplifier and a time base corrector. I placed adverts in the local press and waited for my mobile to ring, and ring it did. I was putting two films on each three hour tape so each tape was lasting roughly two and a half hours. I was selling four films for £20, 8 for £30 and 12 for £40. People loved the prices, the picture quality and the service (1 to 2 hour free local delivery). Pretty soon I had a large base of very regular customers who were glad to have found someone who didn't want to rip them off.

In July '98 I bought a card for Channel Bizarre which turned out to be good move as the picture quality was very good and they showed quite a few English films. Unbeknown to me trading standards had decided to set me up for a fall and in September '98 I got a call from a 'man' in Uxbridge asking if I could meet him to get some films to him. During the conversation the bloke mentioned that he had a pal who was a dog handler and did I stock dog sex films as he wanted to have a joke on his pal. I told him that I didn't touch that sort of stuff. Anyway we arranged a meet in Uxbridge and he turned up in an un-marked white DAF van. I sorted him 4 films and off he went. In November '98 the same bloke phoned again and this time he said that the films had been good but did I have anything stronger, it turned out that he wanted me to supply films with girls between the ages of 14 and 15. I told him that the closest we had was the Dutch Seventeen type of film and that we would not deal in films with underage girls. He had 12 films from me this time.

This horrible, cowardly, snivvling little shit turned out to be a 'technical assistant' from Hillingdon trading sub-standards called Ronald Smart, he's slim, about 5'10 with very curly dark brown hair. In Febuary '99 Martin King ( quite tubby, about 5'9, about 34 with light brown hair combed into a side parting, looks like a real mummy's boy with a sad penchant for white socks ) from Hillingdon sub-standards accompanied by two of his cronies (one asian and a very skinny chinese bloke with a funny shaped head) and three plod turned up at my door at 8.30am to search my house. They took all the stuff I was using and said they'd be in touch. I received 2 letters from them in March and April asking if I'd come to their office for an interview which I declined and then in September they came back and gave me a form to say they were taking action and I was to be in court in October.

After a couple of appearances I elected for a trial by a jury and the case was put to Isleworth Crown Court. After a couple of false starts the trial got under way on Tuesday July 4th 2000.  I was charged under the video recordings act on three counts of supplying an unclassified video work and three counts of possessing an unclassified video work with intent to supply. I had based my defence on the video recordings act, the part of it that says it is a defence to the charge if the person supplying the films had a reasonable belief that the films had a classification certificate of some kind issued by the BBFC. My barrister argued that it was a ridiculous situation that the government could if they wished ban the channels from which I was taping these films but choose not to but if I tape them and sell them for even 1p then I was a criminal. He told the jury that anyone could tape these films, own them, lend them, give them away with no problem and so the governments argument about protecting children was obvously not true and if anyone can tune in to these satellite stations and watch/tape the films why would anyone consider it to be illegal to sell the films ( copyright wasn't part of the case ).

Of course sub-standards denied that they'd tried to entrap me into supplying them with beastiality films or under age girls and their barrister kept me on the stand for about an hour but I told the jury that I was so sure that if I stuck to using official viewing cards for legally available channels that anyone could watch if they so wished then I could be doing no wrong.

I was a bit worried because the jury consisted of 6 women (2 were middle aged and 1 was quite old) and 6 men but then one of the men had to drop out. The judge whilst doing me no favours at least made it very clear to the jury that there was no paedophilia, beastiality or violence in the films. The jury were only out for just over an hour before returning a unanimous verdict of not guilty on all counts. They showed great commonsense and intelligence in being able to see through the prosecutions smoke screen of legaleese and gobble-de-gook and character smearing. For this reason I would like to nominate them to your hall of fame.

What I didn't mention about this defence is how risky it is. The burden of proof is reversed when using this defence. It ceases to be the prosecutions job to prove a persons guilt, instead it becomes the defendants job to prove their innocence and yet despite this the jury still saw how absurd the current situation is regarding blue movies.

Well, I think that's about it, for 18 months I had to live with the worry of possibly going to prison because sub-standards were not big enough to say "this shit is harmless, lets go and get someone dealing in nasty stuff" all they wanted was a result of some description, nice to know where your tax goes isn't it?