At 01:40 PM 4/8/96 -0400, Declan B. McCullagh wrote:
Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 8-Apr-96 Re: Australia's New South W.. by Mike Duvos@netcom.com
I'd be interested to know if the courts have ever had a case in which a person has been declared to have been in "possession" of illegal material merely by virtue of its momentary presence in their cache, screen buffer, or usenet spool.
There is a case now involving the University of Pittsburgh in which the Feds are attempting to prove that an individual was in possession of certain child porn images on his own PC during a brief span of time in 1993.
For it to be a crime, I would presume that the courts would require "guilty knowledge" of the act. (At least I hope they would!)
But what is "guilty knowledge"? Let's suppose I'm web-browsing, and I come across something I shouldn't. If I'm aware of caching, I _know_ that the stuff is in my memory or HD or somewhere, and I _know_ it's illegal. Does that constitute "guilty knowledge"? What if a person is unaware of this caching? Does he lack the same guilty knowledge? See, this is the problem with the "guilty knowledge" idea: It really isn't knowledge which should be illegal, intent is vital. Part of the reason "our" system is so screwed up is that police can misrepresent our actions in this way. I have an easy solution for this: _NO_ information should be illegal. None. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com