New York Court: Internet Child Porn is OK, Browser Cache ≠ File on Hard Drive

[Renzokuken]

Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...-porn-surfing/

New York High Court OKs Child-Porn Web Surfing
By David Kravets May 9, 2012 3:10 pm

Accessing and viewing child pornography over the internet is not necessarily a crime under New York law, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday.

The unanimous court said that child porn stored in a computer’s browser cache is not enough evidence to convict someone for child-porn possession under state law.

The New York Court of Appeals ruled that the authorities, under New York’s child-porn statutes, must prove that an internet surfer knew that his computer automatically stored cached images, or printed or downloaded the images.

“Nonetheless, that such images were simply viewed, and that defendant had the theoretical capacity to exercise control over them during the time they were resident on the screen, is not enough to constitute their procurement or possession,” Judge Carmen Ciparick wrote (.pdf) for the court.

(A cache contains images or portions of a web page that are automatically stored when that page is visited and displayed on a computer screen. If the web surfer visits a web page again at a later date, the images are recalled from the cache rather than being pulled from the internet, allowing the page to load more quickly.)

Judge Victoria Graffeo concurred with the results in a separate opinion but blasted it nonetheless. She said the decision “will, unfortunately, lead to increased consumption of child pornography by luring new visitors who were previously dissuaded by the potential for criminal prosecution.”

Patrick Trueman, president of Morality in Media, also decried the decision, saying the court has given “permission to pedophiles and child molesters to continue the sexual molestation and recording of child sex abuse.”

High courts in Georgia and Alaska have ruled similarly. To counter similar rulings by two federal appeals courts, Congress in 2008 amended federal child-porn statutes to include language making it a crime to “knowingly access” child porn.

Child pornography generally may be prosecuted as either a state or federal crime.

The case before New York’s highest court concerned James Kent, a former Marist College professor, who claimed the thousands of child pornography images found on his work computer were for a research project.

In 2007, his computer hard drive was malfunctioning. College technicians examined the hard drive for defects and encountered the porn, much of it downloaded and stored. The high court’s ruling did not alter James Kent’s 141 convictions in connection to downloaded child pornography, but it reversed the two convictions dealing with porn discovered in the cache.

He was sentenced to an indeterminate term of one to three years, which is unlikely to change under the court’s decision.

[tyven]

NEW YORK BEST STATE

[SephYuyX]

Moving everything to temp.

[Demosthenes11]

oh is seno finally getting out of jail?

[hey]

It would be quite silly if they ruled any other way. It wouldn't surprise me if i've got some cp in my temp folder right now just from browsing 4chan.

[Xno Kappa]

Meh. Sensationalist media hard at work here. Of course they have to prove you specifically intended to view child pornography, any other ruling would've been silly as hell and downright thought police type shit.

[RKenshin]

Honestly, I have trouble seeing this work any other way?

I don't like anything childlike when it comes to that shit and I even find it rather disgusting (lolis, hentai, role play, whatever), period.

But even that being true, I couldn't seriously say that I know for a fact that every single picture/video/webpage ever loaded in my browser has never had anyone under 18. I mean, even 17 is considered CP, right? I don't even know; but regardless, I'm sure that applies to most people.

[archibaldcrane]

Meh. Sensationalist media hard at work here. Of course they have to prove you specifically intended to view child pornography, any other ruling would've been silly as hell and downright thought police type shit.

The point is, even if you specifically intended to view it, it's still legal to view under the New York State law - because the law is against possession.

Federal law just says "knowingly access" - so that'll fuck you good if the feds are after you.

[Renzokuken]

What makes this newsworthy to me is that they are making a huge distinction between a cache file generated by a web browser and the rest of the files stored on a computer. One can argue that CP existing on a cache does not prove intent to view it, or prove who actually viewed it. In all honesty though, the same argument can be used for the rest of the files on the computer. There are lots of ways malicious websites and viruses could place unwanted CP on your hard drive without you even knowing about it, although you'd have to be pretty computer stupid to let something like that happen.

I would hope this type of decision would lead to more effort put towards law enforcement and prosecution of the creators of CP, but I know that's wishful thinking.

[Pirian]

The point is, even if you specifically intended to view it, it's still legal to view under the New York State law - because the law is against possession.

Federal law just says "knowingly access" - so that'll fuck you good if the feds are after you.

This isn't true, I don't think?

The New York Court of Appeals ruled that the authorities, under New York’s child-porn statutes, must prove that an internet surfer knew that his computer automatically stored cached images, or printed or downloaded the images.

It's still illegal if they can prove you knew about it

[archibaldcrane]

It's still illegal if they can prove you knew about it

If they prove you knew about image caching, sure. How many CP enthusiasts A) Know about that

and

B) Don't set up their computer to auto-clear the cache?

[Pirian]

Ahh yeah I see what you are saying

[hey]

One can argue that CP existing on a cache does not prove intent to view it, or prove who actually viewed it.

It doesn't even prove it was viewed at all.

In all honesty though, the same argument can be used for the rest of the files on the computer. There are lots of ways malicious websites and viruses could place unwanted CP on your hard drive without you even knowing about it, although you'd have to be pretty computer stupid to let something like that happen.

You don't really have to be stupid to let that happen. And there are also things like freenet which will automatically download files to be shared with other users, which could easily include child porn.

[Titanss]

Honestly, I have trouble seeing this work any other way?

I don't like anything childlike when it comes to that shit and I even find it rather disgusting (lolis, hentai, role play, whatever), period.

But even that being true, I couldn't seriously say that I know for a fact that every single picture/video/webpage ever loaded in my browser has never had anyone under 18. I mean, even 17 is considered CP, right? I don't even know; but regardless, I'm sure that applies to most people.

trust me everyone had that 14 yr old on their pc at one time or another