Using a computer to access and view child pornography is a crime,
whether the images are downloaded or not, the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court has ruled.
The decision could have a major impact nationwide. It slams the door shut in Pennsylvania on what the justices say would have been "a gigantic loophole" allowing criminals to view child pornography legally, as long as they did not download the movies or images from host servers to their own computer.
Viewing images online does typically result in a copy of the image being left on the user's computer. But defense lawyers argued that it was not possible to prove any intent to possess the material in those cases, since the user might have inadvertantly viewed the images and made no attempt to save them.
The Pennsylvania court disagreed, zeroing in on what it means to "possess and control." "An individual manifests such knowing control of child pornography when he purposefully searches it out on the internet and intentionally views it on his computer," the court wrote.
"As the testimony in this case showed, in such a situation, the viewer has affirmatively clicked on images of child pornography from different websites and the images are therefore purposefully on the computer screen before the viewer. Such conduct is clearly exercising power and/or influence over the separate images of child pornography."
Source: Legal Intelligencer, law.com
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The National Association to Protect Children is a national, pro-child, anti-crime membership association. We are founded on the belief that our first and most sacred obligation as parents, citizens, and members of the human species is the protection of children from harm.
PROTECT is a bipartisan pro-child, anti-crime lobby whose sole focus is making the protection of children a top political and policy priority at the national, state and local level.
