As expected on the second (after he admitted it)... but yet another case of false allegations probably encouraged by "helpful" police officers.

I think the status quo is crumbling... thank heavens.

If you go to Sky News website right now, the main headline is Langham convicted of child porn.

Not read the article in full - but the front page blurb makes no reference to his acquittal of assault, and just (as per Merdock usual) focuses on the negative).

I'm sure they must have an orgasm every time they get a child porn story.

His career is over. Isn't it odd how we never hear of convictions for those that pedal child porn? Not that I condone those who download it, as they are part of the process of course. I'm still not certain the extent to which Langham downloaded the stuff, but I am led to believe it was no where near the scale of Paul Gadd's offences.

chrissy wrote:
His career is over. Isn't it odd how we never hear of convictions for those that pedal child porn?

Can someone enlighten me? What exactly is "downloading child porn"? Do they mean looking at it on the internet (ie the "downloading" is the material going into your cache) - or copying (to your computer) photos that were published on the net?

The net is alot "cleaner" now than it used to be - you could often get onto a site and then find strange material "popping-up" all over the place.

Regarding your second point, Chrissie, I suspect its because this material is hosted in odd places (Russia / Ukraine ?) and difficult to trace.

I imagine "downloading" it is storing it on your hard drive, however, I should imagine it is not too hard to trace a computers browsing history, so the grey area is between looking and saving I assume.
Or maybe not.
Either way, more research and definetly publicity seems to go into prosecuting a "name".

As I understand it, Chris Langham did actively save images onto his computer, but I'm not sure whether that is the issue legally. As you say Mart, every action you have ever taken on your computer can be retrieved very easily. I think anything found is classed as having been downloaded.

As far as the police are concerned, who are they more likely to concentrate on? Easy targets who can be can be convicted by a quick look at their computer, or the evil internet barons ducking and diving on different web domains all over the world? It's all about stats.

I think there's definately a case for decriminalising the 'posession' of a few lesser 'indecent' images of children, e.g. naked but not sexual images. This could free up more police time to concentrate on tracking those who create and market the serious child porn. This would be a bit similar to decriminalising the casualy personal use of cannibis in order to focus more on the dealers.

Of course it's not just the prosecution of them, but up to five years of follow up checks and paperwork while they are on the sex offenders register. So much police and court time is wasted on prosecuting the smaller fish while the sharks swim free.

Exactly the same as the Gary Glitter case.
Well he admitted to downloading images,and of course he'll pay for that.Let's hope the judge shows some commonsense on sentencing.
Again back to the problem of belated accusations,encouraged by over zealous police trying to generate high profile cases to bolster their careers,while attempting to ruin the careers of those they persecute.
Hopefully a 'statute of limitations' could become unnoficially accepted for these cases,Prosecution service is seen to be on dodgy ground again.
Of course all this paraphernalia circus about underage sexual matters has generated a 'McCarthy' reds under the bed atmosphere about anything even remotely connected to the whole business.Hence why commonsense left the building at about the same time as Elvis.

Solihull Exile wrote:
Hopefully a 'statute of limitations' could become unnoficially accepted for these cases.

We've been waiting for over 1000 years for a Bill of Rights - so I wouldn;t hold my breath if I were you !

This government is all about taking your rights away (for example the "Englishman's home is his castle" law, which has existed for over 880 years has recently been abolished, giving some eople the power to force entry to your home) - not about increasing them !