In a controversial decision that is already sparking debate around the country, the New York Court of Appeals ruled 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.
Whenever someone views an image online, a copy of the image's data is saved in the computer's memory cache.
The ruling attempts to distinguish between individuals who see an image of child pornography online versus those who actively download and store such images, MSNBC reports. And in this case, it was ruled that a computer's image cache is not the same as actively choosing to download and save an image.
"Merely viewing Web images of child pornography does not, absent other proof, constitute either possession or procurement within the meaning of our Penal Law," Ciparick wrote in the decision.
A copy of the court's full ruling on the child pornography decision can be viewed online.
The court said it must be up to the legislature, not the courts, to determine what the appropriate response should be to those viewing images of child pornography without actually storing them. Currently, New York's legislature has no laws deeming such action criminal.
As The Atlantic Wire notes, under current New York law, "it is illegal to create, possess, distribute, promote or facilitate child pornography." But that leaves out one critical distinction, as Judge Ciparick stated in the court's decision.
"ome 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."
The case originated when Kent brought his computer in to be checked for viruses, complaining that it was running slowly. He has subsequently denied downloading the images himself.
I'm more worried about the 16 year old sexting her boyfriend going to federal prison and registering as a sex offender.
THATS the problem which needs addressing.
Without this decision, an inadvertent click would be a crime worthy of prison time
so now you can safely view 4chan in new york?
With this decision an intentional click could be easily disregarded as inadvertent if one gets caught, whereas before it didn't matter how it was clicked. You shouldn't even be putting yourself in the situation to "inadvertently" click something suspect anyways.
Misleading thread title. No one is seriously talking about legalizing child porn, the question is simply what the threshold is for it becoming a prosecutable offense. The people who pay for it, or even worse produce it, are still going to get looooong, unpleasant prison sentences if they're caught.
..though..100 times?
Yeah what if you save it to your thumb drive and hid the thing any time cops come knocking on your door?
The number's irrelevant. Where do you set the cutoff point, 5, 30, 50, 1,000...? A single page can have hundreds of images on it, and it would be wrong to prosecute based on an inadvertent click. Some positive hits will go unprosecuted, but that's an acceptable trade off to keep the innocent free.
The number's irrelevant. Where do you set the cutoff point, 5, 30, 50, 1,000...? A single page can have hundreds of images on it, and it would be wrong to prosecute based on an inadvertent click. Some positive hits will go unprosecuted, but that's an acceptable trade off to keep the innocent free.
Hiding something is not exactly the complete solution. Those images that are stored in the thumbcache.db supposedly contain information as to where it came from. So if it points to drive g:, which is your flash drive and the picture looks incriminating, they could demand you produce said drive or get you for obstruction of justice.
Encrypting your whole drive is also not a solution because they can also demand you produce the password to it or face the same charge.
Only if they had a warrant.
With this decision an intentional click could be easily disregarded as inadvertent if one gets caught, whereas before it didn't matter how it was clicked. You shouldn't even be putting yourself in the situation to "inadvertently" click something suspect anyways.
so now you can safely view 4chan in new york?
ive never been to 4chan. is it pregnant with child porn???
It has a lot of shit on there, some of which is CP but it is usually deleted fairly quickly by mods.