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Viewing Files on the Web Considered Possession?
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.
What if someone "Save As" illegal images into "Temporary Internet files" folder?
I thought if someone knowingly viewed some illegal images, he should at least have the commonsense of clearing the cache!
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
They're going to try the "my friend put the crack in my glove compartment" line.
This would be more like the cop finding rocks of crack stuck in the treads of your tires.
"Sorry, but you can't very well look at the pics without downloading them...the file is just in your cache instead of a location you specify. As for not printing a hard copy, I fail to see how that is at all relevant."
The issue is that he's being charged with *posession*. Technically he's in violation, but if that argument can hold water in court, then anyone who views copyrighted images online using a cached browser can be charged with unauthorized copying of copyrighted images.
I agree completely. If I have pictures of airplanes on my computer, it isn't the equivalent of hijacking an airplane and flying it into the world trade centers. If I have pictures of my front lawn, that isn't the same as making a fertilizer bomb and blowing up the federal building. But for some reason having pictures of naked kids means that you are going to commit child rape. Granted, I think kiddy porn is disgusting myself, but 20 years in prison seems a bit excessive. People who rape actual kids get less than that.
Step one: Buy some kiddy porn
Step two: Find out when someone's house is about to be searched.
Step three: Place said kiddy porn in their house.
Would the person then be charged? I don't think so (assuming the cops learn that the person didn't deliberately obtain the porn). Should be the same case with the internet.
If I have a page I've viewed that is obviously for porn (either accidental click or the google thing) and I don't click on any other links, it's fairly easy to prove I didn't deliberately view the porn (and stopped viewing when I realised what it was). But if I proceeded to click on numerous links after finding out, then it's easy to prove I knowingly looked at it.
Obviously 4 hours _isnt_ an accident, so your point is moot. I didnt read the article (this is slashdot!) but if all he's getting is 20 hours of prison time, thats a joke. This person needs intensive therapy (10-15 hours per week). Sexual predators have a mental illness that disconnects them with the emotionality of sex and focuses them intensly on the sexuality. I'm tired of seeing sex offenders (so called "perverts") being stuck in prison and then released back into society. These people do not need prison time, they arent criminals (except by law), they are persons with _mental disabilities_! And as such they need counseling to assist them in seeing why they're wrong instead of just sending them to prison.
If they showed that he knew what they were and downloaded them intentionally, then he is guilty, regardless of whether he knew they would stay on his harddrive.
This is no different than borrowing someone else's kiddie porn magazine and reading it. Even if it's temporary, you intentionally had possession at some point. That makes you guilty.
Whether he knew the copies would remain on his computer is irrelevant if he intentionally accessed them, knowing they were pornographic images of children.
If there was no evidence that he intentionally accessed them, knowing what they were, then he should get off.
1. By viewing the images of exploited children you are creating a demand. Higher demand means more kids life's are ruined to create more pictures.
Except that this doesn't apply in a post scarcity economy. If you buy apples, then you create demand for more apples. But by your logic then if you download music from a p2p site then you are creating demand for more music and thus more music will be created. However, in reality it is very hard to determine if this is the case, and if anything the opposite seems more likely to be true. But in any event, this many didn't 'use up' any of the pictures so by downloading them there aren't any less pictures for others to download, so no new ones need to be created.
The U.S. economy would collapse if all victimless activities (otherwise known as freedoms) were made legal.
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http://www.prisonactivist.org/crisis/evans-goldbe
Art Schools Dietzilla
Needless to say this poses the question of "Harm" and how we as a society can protect ourselves from harm. The slippery slope that is the enforcement of morality.
Where can you make sure that any law can be passed? Do it for the protection of the innocent and impressionable children. Illinois just recently PASSED a law that will ban the sale of violent video games to minors. Obscenity laws can be found on the federal to township levels.
Does any of this make sense? Do drug laws, obscenity laws, prostitution laws, marriage laws, sex laws, liquor laws, or a slew of other laws make sense? If you ask Mill's or a number of libertarians, no. The only laws that make sense are those that protect against harm. Physical harm can be easily identified, it's the mental harm that people get so cloudy on.
If I do drugs am I harming anyone (assume that in this case that drug making, transportation, and selling is legal)? Am I harming anyone when a willing partner is ready to sell their sexual services and I take them up of the offer (assume that in this case protection is used ... etc)?
Don't get me wrong, I'm agreeing with you and not assuming you don't know about Utility, just trying to expand on your claim a little further.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
AFAICT, the reason why the mere possession of certain things is illegal is simply because there is no reasonable explanation of why you have them other than the intent to break the law. Whether or not that's actually that case is another matter, but isn't the central question actually one of reasonable doubt? To extropolate a few examples... If a cop finds me with a bag of sweet, juicy crack in my back pocket, and I insist that someone shoved them there and ran off, it does indeed look bad. However, if I have no prior drug-related convictions, a battery of character-witnesses testifying to my law-abiding nature and a squeaky-clean blood analysis, reasonable doubt says that I'll almost certainly get off. Similarly in this case, if there is kiddie-porn in the guy's cache, it looks bad. However, if there's none anywhere else on his PC, or in his house, and no reference to kidde-porn sites in his browser's history, then IMHO, he should probably be allowed to walk... because there are numerous explanations of how that stuff could've got there 'by itself' that do not involve any illegal activity. For it to be illegal simply to be in possession of a 'bad thing' regardless of context, and without any recourse to any kind of legal defense, is obviously dangerous.
While it's true that the formal definition in the field of logic corresponds to the link you provided, I've always been bothered by it, because it relies on an archaic definition of the word "beg". (When was the last time, apart from this particular logical fallacy, that you heard someone in real life use this word in that manner?)
To use the more modern definition of the word "beg", or to "ask for", "begging the question" could quite literally mean that the proposed conclusion is so unfounded that it essentially begs related questions to be asked. So while it is not the historically correct usage, it does fit in perfectly well with modern English in my opinion.
Of course, I'm no apologist for commonplace modern incorrect usage of something to override its true correct definition -- spelling "spatial" as "spacial" or using the word "irregardless" irritates me to no end. But in this case, his usage was not incorrect per se.
(Aside: Of course, the real reason I even made this comment is that I always hated those tests where I had to remember all the fallacies, because "begging the question" never matched with what I knew the definitions of the individual words to mean. It wasn't until recently that I even learned that at some point in history "beg" meant "assume". So it's really a personal vendetta against that particular fallacy. If they'd just used some other phrase, or even the Latin, I'd probably never have been bothered by it.)
I'm forgetting the exact name of the act in the US, but there was a law put into force about 5 years ago, got repealed a few years ago, that specifically targetted simulated pornography for the reason you state, that the people involved might be emboldened by the viewing of the pictures to actually try something with a real child. *wry grin* I remember that when the law went into effect, the people who were most frightened were fanfiction authors. Suddenly, they had to come to grips with that the Sailor Moon characters were, in fact, defined to be about 15 and were therefore illegal to write sex scenes with. It did raise an interesting question, though, as to where exactly the line between appearance and reality needed to be drawn. In the case of these fictional characters, most of them looked much older, but official backstory was that they were younger. As an analogue, I have a female friend from high school who's currently 23, but doesn't look a day over 13, just something that runs in the females of her family line. Are pictures of her illegal? She looks underage and without context, any picture of her would seem to be illegal, but in actuality, she's in her majority. *wry grin* It raises all kinds of thorny questions, which is probably why the act was repealed.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
1) Web cache would show changes in the site over time. Easy money for defense.
2) You think there would be any proceedings without finding the site owner? They may seem to be a consumer, but you would be the provider. They would hunt you down sooner than him/her.
2) In order to even try it, you would have to get your hands on kiddie porn. In this case, you should be publically gutted, after ebing castrated first.
Fun to read, but a weak strategy.