Sweet Entertainment Group chief Steve Sweet goes on trial Feb. 16, charged with making and distributing online eleven adult fetish vignettes the prosecution calls obscene under Canadian law against combining explicit sex with violence and cruelty.
"Mr. Sweet will be launching a vigorous defense of the charges," said Sweet legal affairs chief P.G. Kent-Snowsell, in a statement on the Sweet Entertainment Website, "including leading expert evidence regarding the popularity of BDSM, the safe sane and consensual nature of the acts depicted in the vignettes and the unlikelihood of any substantial risk of harm."
Snowsell said the defense also plans to bring in "live Internet demonstrative evidence" showing that popularity "since the World Wide Web came into its own."
He said the case could raise "new and important issues" about today's Canadian community standards, including what Canadians will tolerate other Canadians viewing.
Sweet and three others were arrested in December, and authorities were said to have seized computer equipment and files and videotapes.
