Between down loading terrorist propaganda and training leaflets but not doing anything with them supposedly and down loading child porn and not commiting the act supposedly?

One goes to prison and gets their name on a offenders list the other gets away with it and is able to sue the government for arresting them

Hang the fooking lot of them

And there we have it, Friday's tin of worms well and truly open.

To answer the question, I don't know!

Exactly.

Ban free access to information.

It's a fine line isn't it, but I do agree that one way or another they should be treated similarly.

How would we go about that?

It's impossible.

Hence the statement I made in response to the original post.

But you either allow somebody to view ANYTHING at all on tinterweb or you make specific laws to ban certain things which surely goes against the idea that we live in a supposed free country.

And if you do make such laws then who decides what you can see and what you can't?

Surely the best approach to kiddy porn is to stop the source, by criminalising the act of viewing it to me it looks like you are admitting that it's too difficult to track the source so the lesser offence is better than nothing, or it's done for figures to make the government look good.

You could say by stopping the people viewing it wouldn't be made in the first place, but it's surely a much harder job prosecuting viewers than it would be to track producers.

Difficult area this.

Very difficult area.

And as a starter I would say that any information available free of charge, and therefore able to be unwittingly accessed, should not carry criminal charges for viewing it whatever it may be.

Knowingly paying for something is different (i.e. having to input credit card details in order to access a site), especially if there is a specific law stating that it should not be purchased and, although ignorance is no defence in law, any legislation should be sufficiently publicised by government or internet service providers in order that people can be reasonably expected to be aware of it.

Downloading kiddy porn or downloading terrorist stuff (knowingly, that is, 'cos you never know what's in a file till you open it) is a bit like the Internet version of loitering with intent, isn't it. I don't know what the penalty is for the latter but it seems to me an appropriate one to apply in both cases.

So that's what they were doing, silly me

Can you?

Where?

Sure but in both cases (lotering and downloading) the intent does have to be proven before the judge gets to don his black cap eh?