Sharing Child Porn Over Internet Should Not Invite Stiff Punishments, Some US Lawyers Plead

January 30, 2008 at 12:06 PM Medico Legal News
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Sharing Child Porn Over Internet Should Not Invite Stiff Punishments, Some US Lawyers Plead
Taken aback by the aggressive drive of the police against child porn, criminal defence laywers are to seek a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court against awarding stiff mandatory prison terms for those who make available child pornography on file-sharing sites.

At issue is a new interpretation of a 1986 law, amended in 2003 under the Protect Act, intended to curb child-porn advertising.

Consequent on the amendment, anyone convicted of publishing "notice" offering to distribute kid porn across state lines is liable for a 15-year-term.

Last year, Walter Sewell, a 43-year-old pharmacist from Missouri, was sentenced under the act to the automatic 15-year prison stretch after downloading and sharing sexually explicit images over the Kazaa file-sharing network.

"It's an innovative use of the statute," said Don Ledford, a spokesman for prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri, in Kansas City. "We were the first district in the country to use the statute that way to get the 15-year mandatory minimum."

Kazaa is an open system, meaning the authorities can easily learn a user's identity from his internet protocol address by subpoenaing the internet service provider. In Sewell's case, the FBI made the case.

"Prior to the internet playing such a dominant role among pedophiles and child sexual exploiters, publishing a notice for child pornography might have meant classified advertising or a notice online in a chat room or message board offering to sell child pornography," Ledford continued. "What's innovative here is the Kazaa software itself generates that notice."

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