Posted: Sep 11, 2012 6:30 pm
jez9999 wrote:I think the laws on possession should at least be relaxed, because it's too easy to stumble across under-16s on the internet accidentally if you're browsing, say, 4chan. You could be extremely conservative in what you browse, and probably avoid it 100%, but I don't like having to clamp down on my own freedom like that.
Perhaps, but have you ever heard of anyone being convicted for having a few pictures on their hard drive? They're usually convicted after a big investigation of their activity over a long time and have images numbering in the thousands, at least based on the media reports I've read. And is it really that easy to accidentally stumble upon child pornography? I did once end up coming across what appeared to be a child porn website, and I just reported it to the Internet Watch Foundation (who never got back to me, incidentally). But once in about 10 years of looking at internet porn isn't a lot, really.
But the UK law specifies "take, make, distribute, show or possess." "Make" would cover creating a copy by saving an image to your hard drive, but to my knowledge, wouldn't include viewing it online (although presumably if they could prove a repeated history of such activity, they'd be able to get you). I think the idea that you could be done for possessing child porn after accidentally viewing it online are fanciful.