High Court In India Rules That Viewing, Downloading Child Porn Is Not A Crime

What the fuck.

The only appropriate response to have.

During Supreme Court proceedings, HS. Phoolka, who represented the child advocacy groups, noted that Harish had constantly watched the video over the course of two years.

In case anyone thinks the ruling is actually about "accidental" downloads

Fucking India man I swear

Calm down. Have some cow urine.

So let me get this straight. My county banned most of the popular porn sites because of the negative influence it can have on the populace but has such a poorly written and enforced law that people who possess and watch CSAM are deemed to be not breaking the law. What the actual fuck is going on here. This is a dangerous precedent being set here and I can only hope that supreme court overrules the case and holds the guy guilty.

Remember to vote against BJP. India has a beautiful culture and a lot of the Indian students I met in college were really amiable, thoughtful people, but BJP is ruining it.
So, apparently the only porn allowed is featuring minors?
How the hell can they justify this

100% chance the high court judge has this exact content on his computer.

Who will judge the judges?
- The judges would appreciate it if you just… didn’t.

matt gaetz buying plane tickets there as we speak

Yeah, it's not even just a sensationalist headline. It's what they ruled. How are we supposed to reconcile this with the rest of the world? I'm genuinely asking. How do you include a country with leadership like this in the future of the world? Someone enlighten me.

The defendant claimed that the CSAM had auto-downloaded after he received it through the popular messaging app WhatsApp, which his attorneys maintained is not a criminal offense under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (POCSO) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act.

...Which, okay, makes sense that you wouldn't be guilty. It would be like when people were airdropping shit a few years ago (is that still a thing?) and people were unwittingly getting pictures of someone else's penis. The didn't ask for or go looking for pictures of someone's penis, it was served to them without their intent or desire. The defendant's argument is that he didn't download these, they were sent to him and his phone automatically downloaded them. Is that true? IDK. But i it is true, then he didn't have criminal intent.

But moving along...

Rampant porn consumption has long been considered a major social problem in India, with multiple incidents occurring over the past few years involving sexual violence against women and girls motivated by pornography.

"Sexual violence [...] motivated by pornography". That is... Not a thing. Porn doesn't make people commit violent crimes. If anything, porn availability and consumption appears to decrease sexual assaults.

In one of the most shocking cases from 2021, a 6-year-old was beaten to death after refusing to replicate sex acts with a group of boys who were addicted to porn.

Porn addiction is also not a thing. Outside of religious and moral crusaders, you won't hear the phrase. Psychologists that specialize in human sexuality do not refer to porn addiction. When you look at the background of the people talking about porn "addiction" in the US, it always goes back to religion and morality, not clinical research.

Porn addiction is also not a thing. Outside of religious and moral crusaders, you won't hear the phrase. Psychologists that specialize in human sexuality do not refer to porn addiction. When you look at the background of the people talking about porn "addiction" in the US, it always goes back to religion and morality, not clinical research.
I was interested if this holds up and unfortunately it is a thing in the medical world, albeit not a big one. I found this study, which gives a good overview over the topic.
I'll quote the whole Introduction, because I find it quite interesting and it gives a good overview.
- The existing literature has people saying asbestos is safe and that RoundUp is harmless.
The defendant’s argument is that he didn’t download these, they were sent to him and his phone automatically downloaded them. Is that true? IDK. But i it is true, then he didn’t have criminal intent.
it would be dependent on what "download" means. If they were downloaded into his filesystem, outside of whatsapp (cache for example) that's bizarre. I've never seen an application do that. "Downloaded" in cache, yeah, that would make sense. But still brings up the question of why he was sent them in the first place.
I don't think you can unknowingly download something. Sounds like a lie to cover up. I'm not a software engineer. But I do not think it works that way unless you are downloading immense files or zips. If that's the case it should be clearly shown with what they did download.
- You just unknowingly downloaded this picture of Zoboomafoo. It is now on your storage drive in the form of a cached image file. It's temporary, and will be removed the next time your cache is cleared if you ever do that. Otherwise, it will sit there for some time, lurking in your system. Good thing it's only Zoboomafoo!
  Enjoy!
- Sorry, but that's just incorrect. You unknowingly downloaded a whole bunch of things just in the process of making this comment.
  This is one of the issues that has confounded people since the invention of the world wide web; from a computer's perspective, there is no such thing as "viewing" a file. Everything is a download. The only difference is what your computer does with the file after the fact.
  If you load up a thread on a forum and someone posts a CSAM image to that thread, your compouter will download it. You don't have to make any active choice, other than loading the thread itself, for that to happen. Same on Discord, WhatsApp, or anything else. All forms of access are downloads.
  Edit to add: None of this is relevant to this particular case since the defendant allegedly viewed the video multiple times across a period of two years, which, y'know, is in absolutely no way accidental. But it's still important to understand the distinction because there are a lot of situations where it absolutely does matter.
- Noooope, whatsapp by default downloads images and videos sent to you. I know cuz I have to disable it on my device and clean the downloaded shit from my grandpa's device. Grandpa does want it to keep downloading.
  Edit: Fixed spelling. Misclicked almost evert N with B, lol

Everyday my country finds a new way to be regressive.

Hopefully I can leave it as early as possible.

Good luck mate, South Asia in general is fucked and they're all busy one upping each other on the fucked up list. You're better off abandoning ship to some other place.

I mean…

looks at sexual assault rates in india

…yep, par for the course. Guess which country will be uninhabitable by 2040-2050s too.

Don’t need to be a racist about it, but just know that problem will not just go away and will require robust infrastructure and strong mental health care to handle properly.

weird how fascists consistently do this shit. Or maybe its not given how often they like to exert power over people who they see as lessers.

India has been taken over by backwards-ass right wing religious fundamentalists.

India "became the world leader in internet blackouts", straight up government control. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/25/a-tool-of-political-control-how-india-became-the-world-leader-in-internet-blackouts?

Horrific violence covered up in Manipur on the minority christian community. The country is sliding into some barbaric behavior. https://www.wired.com/story/internet-shutdown-manipur-burning-in-the-dark/