Matthew White, of Sacramento, California, has found himself in a rather unfortunate situation; he's been accused of downloading child pornography. On the advice of his public defender, White is pleading guilty in hopes of cutting his potential 20-year sentence down to three and a half years. After serving his time, White will have to serve 10 years of probation and register as a sex offender. What makes this unfortunate is that the 22-year-old White claims he downloaded the child pornography on accident from the file-sharing service LimeWire. According to White, he was attempting to download a 'Girls Gone Wild' video two years ago, but when he opened the files, instead discovered images of underage girls. White claims to have immediately deleted the images and never looked back -- at least until the FBI showed up at his door a year later.
Last year, agents showed up at the door and asked if they could examine the family's computer. The Whites agreed, and, at least at first, the agents found nothing incriminating. Not satisfied with their preliminary search, the agents used software to dig deep into the hard drive and to recover deleted files. There, they recovered the illegal images. Matt told his local CBS News affiliate: "I asked them, 'Where did you get that? I don't remember that.' I asked them, 'Could I access that if I wanted to?' They said no." Despite the admission by the FBI that he could not access the files even if he wanted to, Matt was still arrested. Quick Google searches, conducted by CBS and ourselves, revealed plenty of complaints from LimeWire users of accidentally downloading child pornography disguised as more innocuous files.
In the event you ever accidentally download child pornography, the FBI advises you to immediately notify it. The Bureau admits that there is a chance your computer would be confiscated, but when your other option is facing 20 years in prison, that seems like a small price to pay. [From: CBS 13]'
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