Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
Yeah, I agree. It is completely ok to have to have concerns about such laws, and not want to trust authorities judgements on these matters.
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/news/story?id=1794781
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Weekend/pa...ory?id=8622696
And when does the act of viewing such pictures become a crime. A guy who signs up for some underground porn site that has 10 year old boys on it, and is actively trading, sharing pics, or paying for access, then yeah, there should be a law to send him to jail.
What about a guy watching what he thought was adult porn on an unscrupulous porn site that got busted for using 16 year old girls who looked older. I bet you'd find a lot less guys agreeing he should be labelled a sex offender and locked up in jail. But, I imagine those 16 year old girls are just as much victims, maybe moreso than the boys in the other site.
There are all sorts of ways for pictures to end up on your pc without intention of getting them there. The wrong google might bring up some pictures that get cached. Is that all it takes to be locked away and forever labelled a sex offender? What if you didn't even see those pictures, is that illegal? |
In order to be found guilty of a criminal offence in Canada, an accused person must have the required mens rea. In the case of possession offences, the minimum mens rea is knowledge. This means to say that the accused person must know that they possess the prohibited thing and that they know what the prohibited thing is (note: they do not need to know that the thing they possess is prohibited.)
So, in all of your hypothetical examples, the person in question would not be guilty of an offence.