Downloading Kiddie Porn?! April 22, 2006
Posted by panamared in Uncategorized.trackback
I am just curious to see what other people's feelings towards child porn are… What are most people's thoughts concerning downloading child porn? If I accidentally download child porn should I be subjected to arrest and prosecution? I don't think so. There has to be an effective way to differentiate between people who download child porn purposely and the ones who do it accidentally! The worst case scenario should be that everyone who downloads child porn gets arrested, but after a thorough investigation is conducted, the accidental perpetrators should be granted immunity.
Panama Red 
I agree! Now we just need to have a way to tell the accidental from the intentional. Do you have a way? Nope, neither does the FBI.
I’ll admit, it’s a strange situation, because I do think it is possible to accidentally come into possession of child pornography, particularly if the production company does not advertise it as such. But you don’t have the same problem with other things that are illegal to possess. You don’t have people saying “I accidentally brought this cocaine to school.”
But consider “I didn’t mean to run over the five-year old,” and how far that would get you. In other words, it is assumed that if you download dangerously, you should be aware of the possibility, the danger, of encountering child pornography, and should behave in such a way that it could be avoided.
Most of the arrests they make are of people with dozens or even thousands of images. But there remain arrests made–of UB students in some cases–who have downloaded only one image that is part of a set that they took from a file-trading system. That one image had them on trial as a sex offender.