So…having child porn in your computer’s cache is not illegal now. At least, not in New York.
I kind of agree with the ruling in principle. I guess it protects the odd person who accidently runs across child porn while browsing the net for the regular brand. Still, I don’t think it’s going to help the dude who’s challenging the law in this case. I mean, 100+ images in his computer’s cache? Yeah, dowloaded or no, the act is the same there. Still, gotta give him and his lawyers credit for finding the loophole.
Thoughts on this?
Hmmhh… I dunno, on the one hand yes, this protects incidental or accidental viewing BUT on the other that’s still “causing [an image] to be transmitted” so even if it’s no longer evidence for simple possession, I could see a legal basis under which simply seeing CP is not a crime but causing (which you do by clicking the thumbnail/link) the transmission thereof IS, and your cache IS a record of that activity. I can imagine that one could say if there’s a cache of a dozen small thumbnails and one full size picture that could be explained as an “OMG, WTF is this site? Must get outta here” incident but repeated instances could be evidence of deliberately seeking it. And there’s always the question of what prosecutors and courts count as being an instance of “an image” (do 3 caches of the same image thumbnail constitute 3 images?). That would be a question even if simple viewing remained forbidden.
(And anyone halfway computer-literate should know that viewed images get cached in your terminal and that deleted files are not actually erased. I foresee a boost in sales for BCWipe)