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Viewing child porn online is no longer a crime in the state of New York, following a ruling from the New York Court of Appeals on Tuesday.

James D. Kent, a college professor, was indicted on two counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child and 141 counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child, convicted and sentenced to prison in 2009. The appeals court dismissed one of the counts of promotion and one count of possession, but supported the other convictions.

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The court’s decision hinged on the fact that the images were not downloaded, only viewed. The court ruled that it cannot prove possession of an image that was automatically stored in the computer’s cache without the owner of the computer’s consent.

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Tens of thousands of images of prepubescent girls around the age of eight or nine were found in folders on Kent’s hard drive. Kent denies his guilt, and has argued that someone else at Marist must have placed the images on his computer.