Posted on 05/09/2012 7:38:26 PM PDT by neverdem
Logic takes us strange places sometimes, like when a judge found herself writing this little gem: "The purposeful viewing of child pornography on the internet is now legal in New York." That's a sentence you'd want to wash your hands after committing to paper (heck, or wash your eyes after reading), but it comes at the end of a line of reasoning in an appeals court decision that makes sense even if it appears to provide a loophole for kiddie porn lovers.
Essentially, the court ruled on Tuesday, you can't be held responsible for things you just see online, even kiddie porn, the viewing of which isn't actually illegal under New York law. As MSNBC.com's M. Alex Johnson reports, the majority opinion by New York Court of Appeals Senior Judge Carmen Ciparik:
"Rather, some affirmative act is required (printing, saving, downloading, etc.) to show that defendant in fact exercised dominion and control over the images that were on his screen," Ciparick wrote. "To hold otherwise, would extend the reach of (state law) to conduct — viewing — that our Legislature has not deemed criminal."
It's true: Under article 263 of New York's penal code, it's illegal to create, possess, distribute, promote, or facilitate child pornography, but it's not illegal simply to view it...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlanticwire.com ...
Does this mean that, if you were walking down the street, and their was a billboard of this material, you wouldn’t be guilty, because you unknowingly walked by it and saw it?
Doesn't paying for it, thus enabling the producers to produce more of it from the profits, count as facilitating it?
Our country is toast. Hell reigns supreme.
Why wouldn’t it be legal to view it.
It’s illegal to possess it, download it or otherwise store it.
So it’s not necessary to criminalize the viewing, since all of the activities leading up to that viewing are illegal.
Her logic makes sense, given how the internet works. How could it ever be legal to be held liable for pop-ups that are pushed to your web browser without your specific request? I don’t think it’s technically feasible to differentiate, and if it were there would instantly be ways around it.
A case where protecting the rights of the many allows abuse by the few.
No its not “totally legal”, even from this ruling. 141 of 143 counts were still upheld.
It should be totally illegal of course.
“Purposeful viewing” means you wanted to see it, you did it on purpose.
I truly hate democrates!
Look at what they’ve done to our great country!
More detail:
Viewing child pornography online isn’t a crime, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in the case of a college professor whose work computer was found to have stored more than a hundred illegal images in its Web cache.
The court dismissed one of the two counts of promoting a sexual performance of a child and one of the dozens of counts of possession of child pornography on which James D. Kent was convicted. The court upheld the other counts against Kent, an assistant professor of public administration at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Kent — who said at his sentencing that he “abhorred” child pornography and argued that someone else at Marist must have placed the images on his computer — was sentenced to one to three years in state prison in August 2009.
(…)
In other words, “the purposeful viewing of child pornography on the internet is now legal in New York,” Judge Victoria A. Graffeo wrote in one of two concurring opinions that agreed with the result but not with the majority’s reasoning.
(…)
The technical details revolve around copies of deleted files that remained in the cache of Kent’s Web browser, which were the basis of the two counts that were dismissed. They were discovered, along with other materials, during a virus scan that Kent had requested because his computer was running slowly.
To demonstrate possession of the images in the cache, “the defendant’s conduct must exceed mere viewing,” Ciparick wrote, adding that “the mere existence of an image automatically stored in a cache” isn’t enough.
Furthermore, the prosecution failed to prove that Kent even knew his Web browser had a cache in the first place, writing, “A defendant cannot knowingly acquire or possess that which he or she does not know exists.”
(…)
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.
But how hard do you really think it is to create a computer virus which would load this stuff onto ANYBODY's computer? Do you really want our government having the power to lock people up for possession of computer files?? I mean, selling the stuff, yeah, lock em up but that's as far as I can see going with it.
For once a good law out of New York.
If, for example, the hacker group Anonymous put a kiddie porn pop-up on Free Republic, all New York residents could be prosecuted if they loaded the Free Republic page.
The way it stands now, you could only be prosecuted if you purposely saved it to your computer.
And Dan Savage says....”Come my Good Pedophiles, you can emerge into the new dawn of Darkness is now Light and Light is Darkness!”.
Pedophiles...the true children of homosexuality....and the Sodomites want their children to be able to come out and play.
Can even a rational mind doubt the signs of the times?
Presuming this story is accurate (huge presumption with the MSM), the judge ruled on the law as it is - not as she or any of us wishes it was. That's what you get when you have judicial restraint.
Strangely I agree with the ruling, there are too many ways for this kind of material to get onto your computer, even if you are not viewing child porn. I’ve read of a few cases were people with infected computers have been sentenced to years in prison, mainly because the prosecutor, judge and jury had no clue how computers work, some substitute teacher in the NE comes to mind but can’t remember her name as a good example.
We should note here that the act of browsing and veiwing child porn is illegal under Federal law.
Which begs the question...would Obama’s federal government bring charges against fine upstanding undoubtedly liberal college professor like Kent...?
So...
Federal charges against a College Grounds Keeper, yes!
But, Federal charges against the Professer Kent of Public Administration...nah, he’d get a pass. Holder would see to it.
FORWARD!!!
That seems perfectly reasonable. If nothing else it forces the state to have solid evidence that someone did something wrong.
If it was never downloaded or distributed it then how do they prove someone viewed it? Install spyware on our computers that cam-cords users?
Anyone using the internet is aware of redirect links that take the computer to unintended sites.
Our fellow Freepette, Gabz, is herself involved in getting a legislative fix to the technical omission submitted tomorrow morning in the NY Assembly. It is not expected to meet any opposition, which would be political suicide. And then NY law will duly ban web browsing of kiddie porn.
The truth is much duller than the speculation. Would it were all slips in the governance of the US were this minor.
Another popular way to prove someone possessed child porn is when he uses his credit card to buy it, and that focuses on a product made by for-profit pornographers, pretty good evidence.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.