[sameerp1]

So would owning a site called childporn.com and allowing people to post direct links to download child pornography without any attempt to stop it also not be a crime? Again, I'm being serious that I really dont know the answer. These are the actual issues at play. Can one really free themselves of legal responsibility by just saying we don't host or post the files ourselves?

[anonymous]

Well, you're asking two questions here:

1. is it legal right now

That I can't say. Ask a lawyer. Most probably not, depending.

2. should it be legal right now

Yes, yes it should. That's the entire point behind "free speech" - once you start drawing lines, shit happens. And the problem isn't with child porn per se, the problem is with the horrific acts that produce it and the mentality of the people who enjoy it, but the image itself should not be in any way illegal. Think of scenes of gruesome manslaughter. There are people who get sexual satisfaction from seeing bloody dismembered corpses. Even so, those images, unsettling as they are to a mentally healthy person, aren't illegal.

[jussij]

> once you start drawing lines

The act of living in a society involves the drawing of lines and without those lines you don't have a society.

The difficult question has always been where to draw the line?

[SoftwareMaven]

Is Google committing a crime if it indexes a CP site? Are you committing a crime if somebody links to CP in your blog's comments? Of course not. Having a link to something is not a crime.

[archgrove]

Because Google and you are not setting out explicitly to build a set of links to copyrighted material against the wishes of the copyright holder. It's all about intent. If I go to a high-street store called "Kitchen Goods" and buy a knife, that store's fine. If I go to a store called "Jay's back-alley shivs" run out of the inside breast of his raincoat between 02:00 and 04:00, he's probably not fine.

The law recognises intent in most situations, and the Pirate Bay exists to provide access to expensive-to-create content without compensating the people who made it. Hence, they have problems (and justifiably so).

[belorn]

Actually, in regard to the Appeals Court, its the majority usages of the site that count. If your blog's comments is mostly used for illegal activity, you are guilty of facilitating the crime by having said blog. Intent was not mentioned by the Appeals Court to have any baring on the matter.

This is how they said Google was not guilty, but the pirate bay was (they mentioned Google specifically in the question and answer).

[sebcat]

Intent makes a big difference here.