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Viewing Files on the Web Considered Possession?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the only-if-the-site-charges dept.

Packet Pusher writes "A Georgia lawyer is taking a case to appeals court to prove that the mere act of viewing a website does not constitute possession of the materials that were automatically cached on your hard drive." While the case in question involves pornographic photos, the implications of such a declaration could reach far further.

1 of 719 comments (clear)

  1. Re:20 years, not hours by VidEdit · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think we are going to disagree on this issue. I'm more interested in the principle than the individual in this case.

    The principle is that Walker County can charge you with possession even if you have never requested the images or viewed them. The images could be preloads, popups, or even downloaded via mal-ware. They don't care. They will charge you with a count for every image that your computer viewed--and pop-ups or mal-ware could download images for four hours.

    Given that the Bush Administration believes that even pr0n that features consenting adults is illegal, this prosecution should be seen as extremely dangerous to your civil rights. It won't take vile child porn to get you thrown in jail--just anything the Administration doesn't approve of. It is guilt by association. Guilt for seeing. Guilty knowledge. And we are talking big time jail.

    You are very impressed that he viewed the images for four hours. If that is what impresses you so, then the law should just state that viewing the images is illegal rather than possession. But laws don't do that because we know that we shouldn't throw people in jail for having seen something--hence the reason we require possession. If he had seen the images on TV we wouldn't be talking right now, but web browsers keep a temporary cache that is meant to be *temporary* and should not be considered possession anymore than the fact you could type in a URL and get the images should be considered possession.

    Mind you, child molesters need to go to jail, but thought crimes and laws that presume guilt are a danger to us all.

    PS, Orwellian *is* capitalized since it is based on Orwell's name.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian

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