Re: Australia's New South Wales tries net-censorship

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 01:40 PM 4/8/96 -0400, Declan B. McCullagh wrote:
>Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 8-Apr-96 Re: Australia's New South
>W.. by Mike Duvos@netcom.com 
>> I'd be interested to know if the courts have ever had a case in
>> which a person has been declared to have been in "possession" of
>> illegal material merely by virtue of its momentary presence in
>> their cache, screen buffer, or usenet spool.
>>  
>> There is a case now involving the University of Pittsburgh in
>> which the Feds are attempting to prove that an individual was in
>> possession of certain child porn images on his own PC during a
>> brief span of time in 1993.
>
>For it to be a crime, I would presume that the courts would require
>"guilty knowledge" of the act. (At least I hope they would!)

But what is "guilty knowledge"?  Let's suppose I'm web-browsing, and I come 
across something I shouldn't.  If I'm aware of caching, I _know_ that the 
stuff is in my memory or HD or somewhere, and I _know_ it's illegal.  Does 
that constitute "guilty knowledge"?

What if a person is unaware of this caching?  Does he lack the same guilty 
knowledge?

See, this is the problem with the "guilty knowledge" idea:  It really isn't 
knowledge which should be illegal, intent is vital.  Part of the reason 
"our" system is so screwed up is that police can misrepresent our actions in 
this way.

I have an easy solution for this:  _NO_ information should be illegal.  None.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com