Viewing child pornography online not a crime: New York court ruling

Yahoo News ^ | May 9 2012 | Eric Pfeiffer

[little jeremiah]

In a controversial decision that is already sparking debate around the country, the New York Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that viewing child pornography online is not a crime.

"The purposeful viewing of child pornography on the internet is now legal in New York," Senior Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick wrote in a majority decision for the court.

The decision came after Marist College professor James D. Kent was sentenced to prison in August 2009 after more than 100 images of child pornography were found on his computer's cache.

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[little jeremiah]

Because “seeing” a crime and doing nothing to stop/prevent it, or even worse, “enjoying” it, is being an accessory after the fact.

No non-evil person could see child pornography and not want to alert authorities about it. If any one were to “see” child porn on a regular basis, they are assisting the production of it by being a user, whether they pay money or not or download or not.

[Melas]

How can anyone tell the difference between accidentally cached images and purposely cached images? And how many people have child porn on their computer that they don’t know about?

That's precisely the point LJ. The cache is just part of your software's internal workings. If you visit a webpage, it caches all the pictures on that page. The cache means absolutely nothing unless there are thousands of pictures in it. You could easily load 50 to 100 just by visiting the wrong web page, following a malicious link, or a dozen other ways.

No one here on FR supports child porn. I'm certain of that. However, the more technically inclined understand this ruling, and why it's a good one. The image cache is simply not a reliable method to see if you were intentionally seeking child porn.

Now, I will grant you freely, the majority of unintentional child porn is apt to be acquired in the pursuit of legal porn, but as distasteful as that may be to some FReepers, seeking pictures of naked adult women isn't criminal.

[Melas]

Agreed, in principle. The only reason I hesitate to support the death penalty for people involved in child porn (and rapists, and other non-murdering criminals) is that it removes any incentive not to kill their victims. If someone is facing the death penalty for child porn, they'll be more likely to kill their victims, since they can't face any worse punishment than execution anyway, and killing the victim (and thus witness) makes it less likely they'd be caught.

Wise. We've been down that road before. Several states made kidnapping a capital offense after Lindbergh, and lo and behold, kidnappers no longer risked anything by killing their captives. It was repealed almost universally, and the odds of kidnap victims flipped from an odds on death to having the odds in their favor that they would survive. Capital punishment for any crime short of murder just provides and incentive to escalate that crime to murder.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Indeed, biblically odd comments.

[HiTech RedNeck]

If there were some anonymous way to rat out a locating of online kiddie porn... I believe every single soul here would be all ears, no matter what they thought about the legalities of this present situation.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

When in hell will the every day working American have his rights and his family protected?...You know...the ones who’s taxes pay for all this bullshit!!!

[Morgana]

I am all for public flogging for these perverts.

I really can’t believe we have sunk this low.

[Neoliberalnot]

Another sickening display of adults and politicians using children for whatever purpose suits them.