"The court upheld the other counts against Kent, an assistant professor of public administration at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y."
"Kent's convictions on the other counts rested on other evidence, including a folder on his machine that stored about 13,000 saved images of girls whom investigators estimated to be 8 or 9 years old and four messages to an unidentified third party discussing a research project into the regulation of child pornography."
JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS, PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET.
He is still going to prison, albeit not for very long, but he will still serve jailtime for viewing the images. However, as he technically did not download them knowingly, he did not deliberately procure the images and cannot be done for doing so.
Although I am unsure if this would stand up in the UK, considering ignorance of committing a crime does not make you innocent of committing said crime. It is a confusing state of affairs.
However, considering he sent several emails discussing a research project into the regulation of child pornography, he might not be the scumbag it is instantly being assumed that he is.
Asuka Soryu said:
Really, I can't see the problem with it. The problem is the people who make child pornography and the molesters, if the only thing you do is look at the stuff and that's it, then you really shouldn't be judged as a criminal.
Ah, you see, this is a real problem.
You are looking at images of child abuse. By all accounts, this makes you complicit in the abuse if you make no attempt to inform someone of the abuse being carried out. You are directly handing money over to people who commit acts of child abuse which means you most certainly should be judged to be a criminal. Finally, if the image you are looking at is an image of a sexual interaction with a child, rather than simply an image of said child nude, then you are looking at rape. By all accounts.
Someone who deliberately obtains images of rape or abuse is scum. There is no way that said image can be obtained without abuse coming to a child down the line.
Oh, Lookie, I just contradicted myself. This certainly is an interesting issue.
And whilst many people are pointing out that it is hard to browse the internet without coming across rather horrific things... Although I admit this is the case (Clicking on a NSFL issue on /r/wtf has left me with a memory that I cannot unsee.) there is a difference between that and coming across a hell of a lot of CP.
I think it really depends about... quantity.
Say, if you went through someones cache and browsing history and it turns out they viewed a single picture in which there was someone under the age of consent engaged in a sexual act or wearing absolutely nothing (Carefully avoiding the technically legal act of viewing a picture of an underage person as long as no sex organs are involved, despite many of said pictures being utterly questionable) then ignorance could be used as a defence.
But if it turned out there were dozens, hundreds, thousands of said images? I think it would be safe to say that they are not innocent of deliberately seeking out pictures of child abuse. Unless, naturally, these pictures came up following said person informing the police that the website they thought was safe was actually hosting pictures of child pornography, hidden among legal pictures...
*sigh*
I do not exactly have a law degree and even I can see the problems with regulating the internet. Laws need to be changed but followed... With discretion (Much like age of consent laws within the UK. Sleeping with someone under the age of 16 = wrong in the eyes of the law, yet discretion is used by the police/parents etc to not end up sending lots of people off to jail who, quite frankly, do not deserve it. In some cases. *sigh*)
Well, that is my collection of shaky views on the matter.
