…………………………..wat.

Viewing child pornography online not a crime: New York court ruling
By Eric Pfeiffer | The Sideshow 

In a controversial decision that is already sparking debate around the country, the New York Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that viewing child pornography online is not a crime.

“The purposeful viewing of child pornography on the internet is now legal in New York,” Senior Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick wrote in a majority decision for the court. (cont.)

WHAT?!

Basically, a professor at Marist College took his computer to be serviced for viruses and the tech found child porn images in his internet cache.  Somebody should tell him that’s how you get viruses in the first place, searching for sketchy porn, but whatever.  He was caught, tried, and sentenced to prison in 2009.

Now the court has ruled that simply viewing images of childporn is not illegal.  You have to show intent by downloading or saving, not simply viewing.

I’ve been on the Internet for a long time and I’ve searched for a lot of things.  I remember those days back before spyware and secure connections and anti-virus software and pop-up blockers, the days where you might click something and an endless stream of Porn Windows would automatically open.  I never knew how to get rid of them, so I basically just turned the computer off and started over.

But that was years ago.  That doesn’t happen anymore.  And further, not once did childporn ever just pop up on my screen.  Nobody accidentally looks at childporn!  Viewing it is indeed intent because you have to actually look that up.  What, was he innocently searching for “baked joys” and his fingers slipped a couple of times?  Besides, it wasn’t one or two images.  It was over 100.  You don’t accidentally look at a hundred pictures of naked children.

Do you know why people make child porn?  Because there’s a market.  Because people want to see it and they look for it.  If nobody watched it, nobody would make it.  If the courts are saying “just looking is harmless” how long before “just downloading is harmless…as long as you’re not the one making it”?

We have laws to protect people.  There are laws against childporn to protect kids from being exploited.  You can’t make new judgements on the other end to counteract the purpose of the original laws to begin with.  

This is what happens when people act like robots and not like people.  The judges were operating on a narrow view of the language used against child porn, that “it is illegal to create, possess, distribute, promote or facilitate child pornography.”  The fact that the word viewing isn’t expressly stated doesn’t mean that looking at child porn is legal.  Now, we have to go through a whole legislative process to get a word added to a statute when clearly, common sense says looking at child porn should be illegal.

There is no common sense left on this planet.  

7:31 pm  •  9 May 2012  •   Let's talk about what you think.
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