Re: Access to Porn sites?

[Valdis Klētnieks <valdis.kletnieks () VT EDU>]

On Thu, 15 Aug 2019 07:13:39 -0700, Babak Oskouian said:

> Another concern is 18 U.S. Code  2258A.  As you know 18 U.S. Code  2258A
> explicitly requires all Internet providers to report any and all digital
> viewing, downloading and possession of child pornography to the National
> Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Very stiff penalties ($150,000
> first incidence, and $300,000 second incidence) are imposed on any provider
> for failure to report.  Do you think (or has your legal counsel explicitly
> assured you) that your institute is exempt form this law?

This is well into very tricky legal territory indeed, because it's a field
where writing the laws to avoid unintended consequences is very difficult.
18 USC 2258A only requires reporting child pornography that you're aware of.
If you don't know about it, you don't have to report it.  This means that the ISP
is better off not searching user datastreams for it, especially in combination
with...

Meanwhile, at the state level, possession of child pornography is usually a
'strict liability' offense, meaning there's no mens rea (state of mind)
component to it. This means that if a user accidentally downloads some CP
because it was labeled "Pirated Copy Of This Year's Top Movie.mp4", they have
an *extremely high* DIS-incentive to report it, because they now have child
pornography on their computer.  And since consideration of intent is
prohibited, that means that the fact you had no intent doesn't matter - you
downloaded it, you have it (or had it) on your computer and that alone is
sufficient to make you guilty of possession yourself.

Who is going to report accidentally discovered child pornography when you
have to take it on faith that the police and district attorney are going to believe
that it's accidental? (See other post regarding porn sites that don't do their
due diligence regarding 18 USC 2257 record keeping....)

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