Um ...

Why were they playing chess during a lesson?

What were they supposed to do if they found child porn on the computer he'd lent them?

Pretend it wasn't there?

WTF???

Man, the guy had CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ON HIS COMPUTER and you are saying the teacher should not have left the children with his computer.

how about learning the lesson: Don't lick the loli and don't download child pornography in the first place.

art project? errrr, yeah ok, whatever you say man, sure! those nude underage girls sure, it's just an art project.

what about the huge cache of images he has at home? still an art project???

the lesson to learn is NOT "don't get close to children" it's "stop downloading child pornography"

Wrong Scale!

"Here is what The Copine Scale..."

That's not the scale used by the courts in the UK. See under Sexual Offences Act 2003 at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100519200657/http://www.sentencing-guidelines.gov.uk/guidelines/council/final.html

See also:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography#Typology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copine_scale#The_SAP_scale

Re: Hmmm

The Police do NOT use the COPINE Scale in the UK. UK Police forces use the Sentencing Advisory Panel (SAP) Levels 1 - 5. There is some correlation between the two, but a COPINE Scale Level 1 is, for want of a better word, less severe than a SAP Level 1.

SAP Level 1 is defined as "Images of erotic posing, with no sexual activity".

All of this is available from the CPS website:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/indecent_photographs_of_children/

@No good deed goes unpunished

The good deed of collecting sexualised images of children?

Anyone who knows you must marvel at your ability to leap for the wrong end of the stick.

Why would he be encouraging children to use his laptop?

Because he is such a fountain of good deeds?

Right.

What About Sexting?

For all we know, some of those images could have been cases of (very) mild sexting, and the like.

If a fifteen-year-old girl takes a photo of herself trying to strike a sexy pose while fully clothed, and then puts it up on the web for all to see, who's the abuser? Is the girl - the supposed victim - the abuser? Would you regard this as a crime of self-abuse? (What, then, of private masturbation? Is that self-abuse?) Or is anyone else who looks at that self-published image an abuser just by looking at what the girl herself published? (Either way, this is all sounding rather Talibanesque, to me.)

Bear in mind that SAP level 1 is based on COPINE levels 4, 5 and 6:-

"4 Posing

Deliberately posed pictures of children fully clothed, partially clothed or naked (where the amount, context and organisation suggests sexual interest).

5 Erotic Posing

Deliberately posed pictures of fully, partially clothed or naked children in sexualised or provocative poses.

6 Explicit Erotic Posing

Pictures emphasising genital areas, where the child is either naked, partially clothed or fully clothed."

Level 1 Images Not Always Illegal

It's important to emphasize that the SAP scale used for sentencing does not define which images are illegal to possess. Sentencing guidelines are used as an aid for determining sentences once someone's been convicted of possessing indecent images of children. The SAP scale does not define indecency, and may cover images that aren't indecent. "Images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity", but which aren't actually indecent, are still legal to possess.

So, when it's reported that someone was found to have, say, 10,000 level 1 images in their possession, it doesn't mean they had 10,000 illegal, indecent images of children in their possession, or even that they had just one illegal image. It could simply be that they had 10,000, entirely legal images of teenage girls striking sexy poses for their myspace pages (if their poses are sexy enough to count as "Images depicting erotic posing with no sexual activity").

When we consider that SAP level 1 is based on COPINE levels 4, 5 and 6, it's even clearer how an image can be SAP level 1 without being indecent. Just look at COPINE level 4:-

"4 Posing

Deliberately posed pictures of children fully clothed, partially clothed or naked (where the amount, context and organisation suggests sexual interest)."

Wait!, what?

"... in which the context or organization of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness..."

Why does that sound like a Thought Crime?

RE: Hmmm

Almost. The Copine scale is different, police normally use the five-level SAP scale, which would make level one "nudity or erotic posing without sexual activity". Still pretty mild. I bet most of the pictures wouldn't even be illegal in less paranoid countries. I don't understand how something like that can even be termed an "abuse image".

Title!

From a comment above;

"...Non-erotic and non-sexualised pictures showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness..."

So no children were abused to create the images, in fact it sounds like none of the images were even "sexual" in any way other than how they had been organized, in someone elses opinion. Note the "... in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness...".

Sounds like the guy was collecting pictures of child models and organizing them in a way the judges thought was "inappropriate" but not involving abuse/sexual images.

So, what was the crime here again?

Back logs

Probably, though they are class 1 which I think is the lowest (AFAIK that doesn't involve penetration or anything but don't quote me) so it's probably not extreme priority. There are not many people who work in that area though, as in looking over them, trying to find trends, familiar places, people etc so I would imagine they have mountains of work (I think where I live there is only a handful who do the really nasty stuff of watching and looking at this all day trying to catch people so it can't be easy)

.. still investigating

Er.. "lowest, calss 1 category"... Collecting for an art project... 4 months out of a maximum of 3 year sentence...

You do realise this probably means they found his manga/anime collection, right?

There's not much to investigate when the auhors names are listed on the font of the book or on the DVD cover.

What abuse?

Point taken, but in this case there may not be any abuse to stop. If they were Level 1 pictures that means they don't show any sexual activity at all.

These days-

Drawings of 18+ fully clothed in Burkas. With the word 'porn' next to it.

Re: practically every parent in the land a paedo

BINGO! You figured out the plan! Congratulations.

And now that every parent is reduced to living in fear that something in the family album will rip away their children, lose them their jobs, and make them a social criminal and pariah, the government now has all the tools it needs to take out anyone they "have an issue" with.

Done and dusted, as they say.

Re: Level 1

Doesn't make the CORBIS or Flickr collections liable, due to the "organization and amount"?

Oh, of course not... someone of better breeding is making money off of them, so its alright then.

Entirely in keeping.

Indeed - and what counts as 'possession' here? If I view facebook any images are downloaded to my computer's cache (this being the way browsers work). Why do I get the impression the people who make our laws don't have any kind of clue how computers work?

What I particularly like about the sentencing guidelines for "Making and distributing indecent photographs of a child" is the following:

"A fine may be appropriate if: the offender was merely in possession of material ... downloaded from the internet but not further distributed"

In which case the individual would have neither made, nor distributed, the material. Why would a fine ever be "appropriate" in these circumstances? Is that not like saying "You're not guilty, but we're going to fine you anyway just because we can"? Well that wouldn't be entirely in keeping with the legal profession would it?

"Making" Does Not Mean Making!

"In which case the individual would have neither made..."

WRONG!

The individual would have made the copy they're in possession of. That's how the law works.

Download an image from the internet, saving a copy to your hard disk, and you've just made that copy of the image. You have then committed the offence of making an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child. Photocopying an existing image is another example of "making".

So when you read, in the local rag or a national tabloid, of someone convicted for making indecent images of children, you now know that it was most probably simply that they were found to have local copies of images obtained from the internet. (Did you think it meant actually taking the original photos?)

@Lee

You seem to have a problem with inter-generational sex.

Freud says those who deny something vehemently are merely repressing it.

You know what the upshot of that is, don't you, paedo?

Don't deny it.

(Probably best if you don't admit it either).