The star is not above the law

The French culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, said the arrest comes from the "darker side of America." The Cannes film festival has begun a campaign to free the prisoner. "We're calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation," Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein said. Tilda Swinton, Woody Allen, Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, Monica Bellucci, Costa-Gavras and Pedro Almodóvar all agree.

Are they talking about someone who was kidnapped by the CIA and waterboarded in Guantánamo?

No. The person our cultural elite is so concerned about drugged and then had sex with a 13-year-old girl at the home of actor Jack Nicholson in Los Angeles in 1977. Roman Polanski was 44 years old then. He pleaded guilty to the crime of statutory rape but, after a 42-day psychiatric evaluation, fled to Europe, where he has lived a charmed life ever since. All that ended on Sunday in Switzerland, however.

Because Roman Polanski is talented and famous, we have talented and famous people asking "Why arrest Roman Polanski now?"

This is exactly what British author Robert Harris did on Tuesday in The New York Times. But the argument that Polanski should be allowed to stay free because he has been allowed to live free in Europe for the past 30 years is absurd. I doubt if Robert Harris would say that about the Nazis who committed atrocities during the Second World War. If a suspected former Nazi murderer is found, he is arrested, no matter what his age and health. As British philosopher A. C. Grayling wrote in The Times, "For such crimes there is no forgetting, no time limit and no hiding place."

Genocide, murder and rape are terrible crimes, wrote Grayling. The idea that someone should get away with a serious crime because his remaining free represents an artistic benefit to the world shows complete disrespect for the concept of justice. Worst of all, it says that there is one law for the famous and another one for the rest of us.

"Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything," Bob Dylan once said. This is true, but it works both ways. The artist owes us nothing; but we owe nothing to the artist, however talented he or she may be. "If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime," is what people say. Roman Polanski did the crime, but he hasn't done the time — yet.