Anthony Diodoro, a 26-year-old from Delaware County,
Pennsylvania admitted knowingly viewing 370 child-porn images
online. He also admitted that he had intentionally visited the
websites for the purpose of viewing child porn.
State law says that a person must have "knowing possession" of
child pornography in order for it to be a crime. A panel of three
judges in the Pennsylvania Superior Court concluded that Diodoro
could not be convicted of knowingly possessing the images because
there was no evidence that Diodoro knew that his computer was
storing the images in its internet cache file.
"Because this is a penal statute with an ambiguous term when it
comes to computer technology, it must be construed strictly and in
favour of the defendant," wrote Judge Richard Klein.
"A defendant must have fair notice that his conduct is
criminal," wrote Klein. "Because of the ambiguity, sufficient
notice was not provided here. For this reason, we are constrained
to reverse [a previous decision] and leave it to the Legislature to
clarify the language if it intends to make the mere 'viewing' of
child pornography a crime."
Klein said that it was well within the power of lawmakers to
clarify the law, if that was their intention. "We note that it is
well within the power of the Legislature to criminalize the act of
viewing child pornography on a Web site without saving the image,"
he concluded.
In the UK, the Protection of Children Act can be used to convict
someone for viewing child porn on the internet, regardless of
whether or not they understood a computer's cache function. "In the
UK simply viewing images classes as a download because your
computer makes images of them on your screen," said Tony Fagelman
of the Internet Watch Foundation, a body which works to minimise
the availability of images of child abuse. "The decision is quite
unusual, usually US law follows the same legal framework that we do
in the UK."
