Child porn nets minimum sentence - WAS THIS JUST?

[Stan]

BY BETTY ANN ADAM, THE STARPHOENIX SEPTEMBER 11, 2010

A man who downloaded a batch of pornography that included images of children made the criminal mistake of opening the files.

Joal Ebach, 27, pleaded guilty in provincial court to accessing child pornography and was sentenced on Aug. 16 to two weeks in jail and three years on probation.

Crown prosecutor Michael Segu said a forensic examination of Ebach's computer, which was seized during a warrant search of his home in May 2008, confirmed the child pornography files were deleted immediately after they were viewed.

Opening the files, which were clearly labelled, constituted the crime of accessing child pornography, but Segu prosecuted the matter as a less serious summary offence.

A joint submission between the Crown and defence recommended the minimum penalty be imposed.

Judge Daryl Labach agreed to the minimum sentence because he accepted that Ebach hadn't gone looking for the prohibited material and deleted it after viewing it.

Ebach must submit his DNA for the national data bank, must register with the sex offender registry for 10 years and forfeits his computers and BlackBerry device. He is also prohibited from having a computer or any kind of Internet account while on probation.

badam@sp.canwest.com

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[Stan]

thoughts?

[Dr. Shane]

I guess that is a fair ruling on the law. He probably just opened the files because he was curious. Gives new meaning to the saying, curiosity killed the cat.

[Outta Here]

Or, maybe he opened the files because he thought it was a news item? Who knows. Unless he had a history of downloading these kinds of files, we really have no idea of "why" he opened them this go around.

[Dr. Shane]

If he was downloading porn, I would guess that he was probably aroused at that point. The news story says these files were labeled, so he knew what they were, even though they were downloaded by accident. I suspect after opening and seeing them, he was repulsed and thus deleted them. Seeing the label on them, he should have deleted them before opening them.

[Gerr]

If guys curious enough to download such files in the internet are prosecuted, what about the people that made them available in the first place? Anything done to them?