[plug] what we need ...

[Matt Kemner]

On Thu, 27 May 1999, Mike Holland wrote:

>   He hadn't paid money for these (which would have been encouraging
> child abuse), or distibuted them, or anything else which might hurt
> anyone. No suggestion of any paedophile behaviour.  Does this seem a
> little worrying?

Someone I know was browsing through the 
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.female newsgroups with "Free Agent", which
for some reason caches all files it downloads.

While he was going through the images, he saw one or two "child porn"
ones, as they tend to be posted to the erotica newsgroups - so he just hit
"next" without realising they were still sitting on his HDD.
One of his neighbours was with him at the time, and decided to call the
cops on him for a joke.  Some joke - the computer got confiscated, and the
person in question got into a lot of trouble over it. I'm not sure what
the final verdict was, but I know he got charged for possession of child
porn.

This is scary stuff.

I've always wondered if one day the cops are going to walk in to my
office, and walk out again with our news server under their arm. I'm sure
they'll find _plenty_ of kiddie porn on there if they knew where to look.
Are ISPs to be responsible for each and every post that comes through the
newsgroups?
what about email?

Once these laws start being enforced, what's some entrepreneuring company,
hit badly by the loss of people from Australia buying password accounts to
their porn sites, setting up a mailing list and charging for entry, and
sending out their porn using PGP or the like?

 - Matt