Please present your argument in 750 words or less. APA format, be clear and concise.
In class we read about the New York Supreme Court’s decision in People V. Kent, which found that first, proving a defendant has “cache files” on his computer isn’t enough to prove that he knew he had such files on his computer and second, “merely viewing” child pornography is not possession or procurement.
Using the Department of Justice’s Citizen’s Guide to U.S. Federal Law on Child Pornography (link below) as a guide, assess the validity of these decisions in the Kent case. Do they fall in line with legal definitions of child exploitation & obscenity as per the “˜Guide’? Accordingly, can you identify any additional circumstances where computer ignorance can legitimately be used as an excuse for possession of child pornography- (yes or no, explain)?
Read the Guide carefully. You may need to read it more than once, in fact. You should not go outside of this document – there is NO need to look up any specific laws and look at the language of the laws as everything you need for this assignment is in the guide linked below; however, we generally strictly limit the number of direct quotes that students may use in these short assignment. The particular nature of this assignment suggests that we should relax that limitation a bit”¦ BUT”¦ please be prudent in your use of direct quotes.