# New York court rules on child porn possession.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-court-rules-on-child-porn-possession/621494>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 10, 2012, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-court-rules-on-child-porn-possession/621494 "2012-05-10T12:23:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Makeitstop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@Makeitstop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Makeitstop)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-court-rules-on-child-porn-possession/621494/1 "2012-05-10T12:23:58Z")

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[So…having child porn in your computer’s cache is not illegal now.](http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/viewing-child-pornography-not-crime-according-york-court-165025919.html) 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?

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**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2012, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-court-rules-on-child-porn-possession/621494/2 "2012-05-10T13:07:14Z")

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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)