Viewing Files on the Web Considered Possession?

Packet Pusher writes "A Georgia lawyer is taking a case to appeals court to prove that the mere act of viewing a website does not constitute possession of the materials that were automatically cached on your hard drive." While the case in question involves pornographic photos, the implications of such a declaration could reach far further.

Time to move those mp3's

[winkydink]

to Temporary Internet Files :)

Hopefully not possesion

[dj245]

Visitors to Shrubbery Porn [rogertheshrubber.net] may be in for a rude awakening when their bosses fire them for possesion of shrubbery porn on company computers.

Can't Tell

[nmb3000]

This is a pretty tough one. I won't be able to decide until I see the evidence.

Now I'm worried

[mangu]

I think it's absurd that someone could face 20 hours in prison for viewing illegal pictures for 4 hours

You think that's "viewing"? FTA: A federal agent said Barton's computer contained more than 450 pornographic images

From my computer:

$ find graphics/xxx/ -name '*.jpg' | wc -l

25584

Now, That's what I call "viewing"!

Re:Sophistry at its finest...

[kooshvt]

I gotta uh go to the ummm bathroom...to...molest pixels

Well that one is just too easy...

[insert 'penis size' joke here]

why do I get the sudden feeling...

[yagu]

Why do I get the feeling that suddenly there are a few extra terabytes of free disk space across the country?

Re:Holely Cheese

[Acts of Attrition]

Don't worry.
All the guys I know whose girlfriends/wives also use the computer know EXACTLY what the cache is and how to clear it.

Doh

[nmb3000]

It's kiddie porn.

And this children, is why one should RTFA.

*cough*

Re:A flurry of frame-ups?

[mccoma]

I think we need the "+1 Evil" moderation

Re:Holely Cheese

[Anonymous Coward]

that's why I do all my browser caching on a usb2 flash drive when I'm looking at illicit internet pictures that I don't want my girlfriend to know I'm looking at.

Or at least I would. If I had a girlfriend, and wanted to look at illicit internet pictures and didn't want her to know it.

Re:Holely Cheese

[Anonymous Coward]

You could just write a small program that moves the mouse randomly for you.

Re:Holely Cheese

[exKingZog]

Nah, my girlfriend loves pr0n as much as I do :p