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!) As for the Pitt "child porn" case, I've spoken with the fellow's roommate and have some more info at: http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=1924 -Declan