Gary Glitter, as is well known, has been convicted of child pornography offences under the Protection of Children Act 1978. In a less widely reported case on the same Act the Court of Appeal has confirmed that the mere downloading of Internet child porn images is an offence.
Jonathan Bowden downloaded, for his own use, indecent images of children from the Internet. He also made printouts, but did not originate the images and argued that mere downloading of images was beyond the scope of the Protection of Children Act, which forbids the “making or taking” of indecent photographs (or “pseudo-photographs”) of children.
The Court of Appeal held that the Act was not only concerned with the original creation of images, but also their proliferation. A person who either downloaded images onto a disk or printed them out was guilty of making them.
The reference in the Act to “making” an image was inserted in 1994, to deal with “the less desirable developments in computer technology.”
The reference to “pseudo-photographs” was added at the same time. A pseudo-photograph is “an image, whether made by computer-graphics or otherwise howsoever, which appears to be a photograph.” This will apply, for example, to digital manipulations whereby a photograph of a child’s face is superimposed onto a pornographic photograph of an adult.
A child means someone under the age of 16, the age of (heterosexual) consent in the UK. Mere possession of indecent photographs (of children) is an offence under section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.
Bowden’s four-month sentence for the offence was reduced on appeal to a 12-month conditional discharge (though he received a three-month sentence for an offence under the 1988 Act of possessing an indecent photograph). Gary Glitter is currently serving his four-month sentence, having admitted downloading more than 4,000 hard core images of children onto his laptop.