Yes you should. If the content is not illegal, then the site owner should not have anything to worry about.
I have heard of a good few cases where cops have arrested and charged people with child porn because pics they had on their computer looked younger then 18. And it was up to the defendant to try to track down the porn star and try to get her to come testify in court that it was her and she was over 18. One of the more popular ones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa-Ashley People DO Not like pedophiles and cops will put charges on people involved in stuff like that and it is up to the defendant to prove the charges wrong. I'm sure the police and jury are real sympathetic to an accused pedophile.
Somehow i don't believe this post, i think you're using this as a smokescreen to divert guilt away from you. 1) Why didn't you provide this info in your original post, perhaps people wouldn't have taken up negative responses? 2) Why are you asking about possession of these images if you were just viewing these sites, this suggests to me that you are planning on downloading them yourself or creating a site yourself with similiar images? I don't know about the US but in the UK, it's actually illegal to view those sites & you could get prosecuted even if you stumbled upon those sites by accident or for genuine research purposes. E.g: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article881976.ece If i'm wrong then i apologize to you but i'm pretty much over zealous when it's about abuse of children. If you're lucky not to be attacked, there's the threat of being attacked to live with, being bullied, intimidated, raped or even killed, so i don't know why you concluded that prisons are safe.
Why are you even asking these kinds of questions? Maybe you should rethink "why" you are having to ask questions of this nature. Here is a very simple answer for you, if its under 18, or looks under 18 - stay away from it.
Just remember that if you view the site with your browser, you will have a local copy of that site and images on your computer! Report the site and stay off it as we have learned in the past, we had a customer that had hidden files like that on their website and once the information was forwarded to the FBI, they requested also the server logfiles which I am sure they used it to track all IP addresses which visited the website.
Sorry buddy, it is not up to the defendant to prove innocence. It is up to the prosecution to prove guilt. And to do that, they must have evidence that the accused knowingly looked at child porn. They must also prove that the person in the picture is actually under 18. Also, there is a supreme court ruling that an offender must have 3 images on their computer to be considered possession of child pornography. But hey, what do I know? I've only investigated a few child porn cases....
That’s what the law says.. but tell that to a defendant on trail that just spent $12,000 on a lawyer and $10,000 on bail. The prosecution can make charges for free… the defendant has to spend thousands upon thousands to fight it. More then 90% of cases in the U.S. get settled in plea bargains because people can't afford to fight the charges of don't want to risk maximum penalties. All it takes is a few images on a hard drive. The prosecution doesn’t have to "prove" anything he just has to convince a jury or a judge the images are child porn.
Don't forget to remember, when investigated for possible child pornography, if you neighbors find out that is going on, they will consider you guilty before innocent. That's just how society operates now a days.
^ Exactly.. When the police charge a pedophile and then the news prints it the news stations and papers just quote what the police tell them and the law enforcement side of the story so the community automatically finds them guilty as soon as they listen to the news. "Accused pedophile" - Get ready for the lynch mob.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions about the US court system. The burden is actually on the defendant to convince the jury that the prosecution's claims are false. If it really was "innocent until proven guilty" then we wouldn't even need defense attorneys. The prosecution would just present facts and the jury would decide, but that isn't how it works. The prosecutor is basically told "Here is the evidence available to you, now get us a guilty verdict any way you can."
You guys really have no clue how it actually works. For you to be arrested, there has to be probable cause. To get an arrest warrant, you have to show a judge that you have probable cause to believe that person committed the crime. After that, you get arrested. Then you have to be arraigned. Another judge has to decide that probable cause does indeed exist. At which point they will decide on bail. And hey, forget the fact that I've testified in court. Forget the fact that, unlike all of you, I actually have experience in this area. And more than 90%? That is entirely a made up number. Most cases (> 50%), maybe. But the reason is not because they can't afford it, because there is this little thing called public defender. On top of that, defense attorneys take up "charity" cases all the time. It's good for their notoriety. The reason is because they KNOW they are guilty. And KNOW they don't have a shot in the world because evidence speaks for itself. But hey, while you guys are playing webmaster and giving out this "legal advice", the advice of which you have no facts nor experience to back up, I've actually been there and done that, and am able to actually tell it like it is. Most of you on this forum are kids. Or people that have recently graduated high school with no real life experience. Please, don't talk about things you don't actually understand.
hostlonestar, nobody is arguing that we are still in the wild west. The system usually works, but even our lawmakers say that a small percentage of wrongful convictions are worth it as long as the criminals are also being convicted. The question is, how many are being wrongly convicted? We know as a matter of fact that 7% of death row convictions from the 70's through the 90's were found to be innocent either through DNA testing or new trials. Considering these are the most serous cases in the system, we can assume that less serious offenses have an error rate that is equal to or greater than capitol murder trials. IMO the wrongful conviction rate system wide is 10-15%. There have been countless injustices, but this is by far the most disgusting I've heard of.... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/us/28judges.html?_r=1 Read it, and tell me how judges got away with finding children guilty in exchange for money from the private prisons they were sent to serve their time at. And don't say these were just rogue judges and it doesn't happen anywhere else. For many years it has been speculated that the prison industry has had an influence on the court system in much the same way that corporate lobbyists influence lawmakers in Washington. This was just the first case that it could actually be proven.
Juvenile court is completely different than grown up court. Juvenile court is sealed. Only people having an actual reason to be there are actually there. Whereas, you can go to your country courthouse and watch trials all day long for adults. I'm not saying there aren't errors, I'm just saying the way you guys are making things out to be is completely wrong and are just a bunch of ill informed opinions that aren't drawn from any substantiation.
You are going to have to do better than that. Explaning their corruption away with your closed door theory just doesn't cut it. That went on daily for a decade. I see where you are coming from now. Some of us are questioning if these errors are legit errors, or if a certain number of them - possibly a high figure - are the result of overzealous prosecutions. Whereas you believe that the people in the system are righteous and can be trusted. The only thing I can say is this..... People like to be critical of defense attorneys for helping to set alleged criminals free, but look at the other side of the court room. The members of the prosecution have been assigned the task of sending someone to prison, and they are able to do their job even if they personally believe that person is innocent. For this reason, it takes a very cold individual to be a lawyer on the prosecution. That is who you are up against when you are innocent and on trial.
Hostlonestar, I think you need to take a step back and realize that all you seem to be doing is attacking everyone here for what?!?! I can state my opinion first hand because about 10 years ago, we had a customer that purchased hosting from us for a website that he had selling jewelry. He also had a free hosting account somewhere else and had pornographic pictures on that site. Well, our company got dragged into this because he had a website with illegal pictures on it (again, with some other company) BUT since we supplied web hosting for his legitimate site, I got a knock on the door at home from the Special Crime Division. Since this happened at my home and at the same time there where a few neighbors over, they heard that they where investigating child pornography. Low down was that my neighbors where so disgussed that I may have been in something like this (since the police showed up) they assumed I was guilty. It just proves that: You are guilty until proven innocent in most people's eyes!
I wasn't using the closed door theory as an excuse for it. I was using the closed door theory as the reason it was able to go on for so long. No, a prosecutor CAN NOT bring a person to trial that they believe is innocent. It is against the law and they will be disbarred, fired, and sent to jail. It's happened before. There's nothing wrong with a defense attorney in my eyes (as long as they're not ambulance chasers). Each person is allowed to have legal counsel. It is needed to make sure they're not getting a shaft. Pretty much though, your opinions aren't based on any facts, just your opinions. Whereas mine are based on my experiences actually in a court room... I have no problem with peoples opinions, unless they go into ill informed opinions. When it comes time for trial you are innocent until you are proven guilty. The defense attorneys get to kick people off the jury just as well as the prosecutors. It doesn't matter what your neighbors think.