Posted: Sep 11, 2012 6:51 pm
I'm With Stupid wrote: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.
I've seen a number of cases of a single image resulting in a charge. Even cases where a 16 year old sends a photo of themselves to an 18 year old acquaintance or something like that. In the US the laws are in my opinion overly harsh especially when sex offender status comes into play. It's messed up when an 18 year old can have sex with a 16 year old and be ok in the eyes of the law but if that 18 year old has a nude picture of that same 16 year old they are a sex offender.
As far as online viewing and 'possession' or 'making a coping'; at least in the US most jurisdictions will consider a computers cache as constituting possession or having made a copy. I believe there was recently a case in NY where such a charge was ruled against but in most cases it's enough to get somebody arrested.