Providence Journal for the defense

[Brian Cady <brianinatlanta2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Online at:
http://www.projo.com/opinion/columnists/content/projo_20030119_19clharr.76db0.html
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Froma Harrop: Internet sleuths -- Another violation of
privacy 
01/19/2003

WHAT DID PETE Townshend do to merit getting hauled
away by police and humiliated before the world? It's
hard to tell. The rock guitarist and co-founder of The
Who was among more than 1,300 people recently arrested
in Britain under "Operation Ore." The crime: paying to
download child pornography onto a computer.

Again, what did he do -- or rather, where is the
crime? Townshend was on his own computer in the
alleged privacy of his home. He didn't molest anyone.
Whether or not he looked at the pictures, the
exploited children would not have been spared their
ordeal.

Townshend says he's devastated by the charges, which
he denies. Pictures of his arrest are bouncing off
satellites as they race around the globe. The
57-year-old rock star has just hired eight guards for
personal protection.

Townshend insists that he used the Internet
child-pornography site for research purposes only.
He's working on an autobiography and suspects that he
was abused as a child. (The hero of his 1969 rock
opera, Tommy, was a handicapped pinball wizard who had
been sexually assaulted by an uncle.) He says he once
called the police to report a child-pornography Web
site.

British police say that they are taking Townshend's
explanation into account. Scotland Yard is still
scouring his computers and looking for records of the
telephone call he claims to have made to complain
about the offensive sites. Townshend was released on
bail with the understanding that he would be available
for further questioning.

Why should the motive for accessing child pornography
make any difference to police? One imagines people
doing it for all sorts of reasons: Curiosity,
research, titillation, by accident, or a combination
of the above. It is not unknown for people conducting
scholarly research into pornography to also find
sexual stimulation in the research materials. (Some
choose this line of inquiry for that very reason.)

And so police will be hard pressed to separate the
Internet users who seek these pictures for lustful
purposes from those who just want to know what they're
condemning. Burrowing into the mind of the accused is
a tangled business. Smooth storytellers will sail
right through the grilling. Bad actors, meanwhile,
will get caught.

This country heard a similar debate over two years ago
in the celebrated case of Larry Matthews. A newsman
for National Public Radio, Matthews went to jail for
trafficking in sexually explicit pictures of children
via the Internet. Possession of Internet child
pornography is a federal crime.

Matthews said he was only doing research for a story
on child pornography. Thus, he was a journalist
deserving protection under the First Amendment, which
guarantees free speech. The court didn't believe him.
It noted that he hadn't conducted interviews or taken
notes on the subject. Furthermore, he had logged on to
"chat rooms" where he traded smutty images with other
participants, including federal agents posing as
teenage girls. If he was doing pure research, the
courts reasoned, he had no need to actually pass along
the pornographic material to others.

Confusing matters, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last
year on child pornography basically upheld the right
to view simulated images of children having sex. In a
6-to-3 ruling, the court decided that
computer-generated child pornography is protected
under the First Amendment. Congress could ban only
pictures of real children engaged in sexual activity.
The crime, in other words, was the actual exploitation
of children, not someone's pedophilic fantasies.

In my opinion, people who actually use children for
pornographic purposes should be locked up in jail, the
key discarded. Marketers of such merchandise can join
them. But what about the customers far removed from
the production? When you get down to people
downloading images from who-knows-where on laptops in
their kitchens, the link between perpetrator and
victim seems rather weak.

Think of all the unwanted pornographic spam that comes
tumbling into our electronic mailboxes -- often with
totally innocent subject lines. Suppose that you open
a message and find yourself confronted with child
pornography. Suppose curiosity prompts you to click
onto a picture or two. Would you deserve to join Pete
Townshend in having your mug in all the papers under
"PORN PERVERT" in giant type? I don't think so.

Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and
syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at:
fharrop@projo.com.


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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