New York court rules that viewing child pornography online is not illegal

[ehra]

As far as I'm aware, the ruling didn't say that the cache can't be used at all as evidence, it's that the existence of child porn in your cache alone isn't proof of possession or procurement. If you're constantly going to sites that are specifically streaming child porn then that seems like pretty solid proof right there.

[BlobVanDam]

As far as I'm aware, the ruling didn't say that the cache can't be used at all as evidence, it's that the existence of child porn in your cache alone isn't proof of possession or procurement. If you're constantly going to sites that are specifically streaming child porn then that seems like pretty solid proof right there.

Yeah, I think they'd see the difference between a solitary file in your cache, and a cache full of CP along with a deleted browser history that shows several CP sites. Any investigator worth his morning donuts would be checking a lot more than just one browser cache folder anyway.
I believe this rule is to give police leeway for common sense, not to give people an easy loophole to avoid legitimate charges.

[ariich]

My guess is that the intent of the law is to avoid charging someone as a sex offender if they come across an image accidentally, and it ends up in their browser cache as a result.

This, and its good that this sort of thing is thought about.  Only problem is that someone could put such an image on a free hosting site and you could bookmark it and look at it to your heart's content, but not get charged, or am I missing something?

I don't think so. The ruling referred to online viewing in absence of other proof. I would argue that saving a bookmark would absolutely constitute "other proof", as would a browser history showing repeat visits to the image.

Plus, presumably once an image is uploaded to a hosting site, it's on that site's domain, and they have responsibility for it. Which is why all the known hosting sites have policies on what you can and cannot upload, and I'm pretty CP would be taken down pretty quickly!