A MAN who posted an video of a pet dog appearing to give Nazi salutes is to appeal his conviction.
Mark Meechan was yesterday fined £800 for footage posted on YouTube two years ago.
The clip featured his girlfriend’s dog raising his paw to statements including “gas the Jews” and “Sieg Heil” and Meechan, who was given backing by ex-English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, was found guilty of breaching the Communications Act by posting anti-Semitic material.
The offence was aggravated by religious prejudice and yesterday Sheriff Derek O’Carroll said Meechan’s defence – that it was a joke to annoy his girlfriend – didn’t stand up as she did not subscribe to the video channel he posted it on.
But outside court, defence agent Ross Brown said the “tolerant and liberal” 30-year-old feared the impact the verdict will have on the free speech of comedians such as Frankie Boyle, Ricky Gervais and John Cleese when performing in Scotland.
On the decision, Meechan said: “I’m going to appeal against it. He says it doesn’t set a precedent, it does set a precedent, a really, really dangerous precedent has been set for people to say things, their context to be completely ignored and then they can be convicted for it.
“You don’t get to decide the context of what you said, other people don’t get to, the court gets to, that’s dangerous.”
On the content of the clip, he stated: “It’s the juxtaposition of having an adorable animal react to something vulgar, that was the entire point of the joke.”
But, passing sentence at Airdrie Sheriff Court, O’Carroll dismissed this defence and said Meechan’s team had little to say to the court about freedom of expression.
The sheriff said: “The fact that you claim in the video, and elsewhere, that the video was intended only to annoy your girlfriend and as a joke and that you did not intend to be racist is of little assistance to you. A joke can be grossly offensive. A racist joke or a grossly offensive video does not lose its racist or grossly offensive quality merely because the maker asserts he only wanted to get a laugh.
“In any event, that claim lacked credibility. You had no need to make a video if all you wanted to do was to train the dog to react to offensive commands. You had no need to post the video on your unrestricted, publicly accessible, video channel if all you wanted to do was annoy your girlfriend. Your girlfriend was not even a subscriber to your channel.
“You posted the video, then left the country, the video went viral and thousands viewed it before she had an inkling of what you were up to. You made no effort to restrict public access or take down the video.”
Sheriff O’Carroll continued: “Although I invited both legal representatives to make legal submissions during the trial about the law on freedom of expression, that was done only to a very limited extent.
“In the absence of focused submissions on that topic by either the Crown or the defence, all I can say is that, while that right is very important, in all modern democratic countries the law necessarily places some limits on that right.”
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