<g> Thought that might entice you!
For starters, I think any good defense attorney should be able to get any person who ONLY had images on their computer off.
For starters, I haven't seen any cases that define whether a file on a computer is actually a depiction of anything. Have you ever looked at the actual file? All it is is a string of letters and numbers. Since when is it illegal to possess a string of numbers and letters on your computer?
Sure, it can be turned into a picture. But a pencil can be used to draw an obscene picture. Does that make possessing the pencil a crime?
And what proof is there that the person ever actually looked at the file as a picture? If they didn't, is it a crime to have on your computer a file that could be turned into a picture of a minor if you have never opened it or looked at it? If so, I think the thing to do is for a hacker to write a program that installs a child pornography photo on every computer it can. A virus that sneaks a child porno file -- doesn't need to be that big, any size will do -- onto computer in the White House, Supreme Court, FBI, Justice Dept., and on and on. Then every person with access to those computers is guilty of a crime of possession of child pornography, right?
And with the recent SC ruling that you can't criminalize digitally produced or morphed images, how can a prosecutor prove that a photo isn't digitally produced? All the file is,as I said, is a string of numbers and letters. There is no way to prove whether they got there by somebody scanning a photograph or loading a digital camera image, or whether somebody typed that string of numbers and letters into a computer. And they don't need to sit there and actually pound the keyboard. They can set up a program that takes File A, and copies it, changing every hundreth or thousandth character, and it was no longer an actual image but a digitally produced image.
Not to mention that the stuff coming out of Pixar and the other studios is so good that how can you say whether any image was photographed or digitally produced?
How is the prosecution, which bears the burden of proof, going to prove it was an actual photographic image of an actual child?
I could say lots more, but got to go to dinner. |
