Internet Watch Foundation

The IWF's remit means that the material we deal with is covered by different pieces of legislation. Case law has contributed to these laws in providing understanding and further options for prosecution by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

 

There are a number of specific cases that are particularly relevant to the work of the IWF:

 

R v Ross, Warwick & Porter: The case held that a person could not be in possession of indecent photographs of children under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 s.160(1) if he no longer had custody or control of the images. In the case of deleted computer images if a person could not retrieve or gain access to an image then he no longer had custody or control of it.

 

R v Bowden: This case held that the downloading an indecent image of a child was an act of ‘making’ under the Protection of Children Act 1978.

 

R v Collard: This allowed for a convicted person to be made subject to a restraining order that can extend to anything that the court considers necessary in the circumstances.

 

R v Fellows & Arnold: In this case, the court held that the wording of the Protection of Children Act 1978 covered the use of the Internet to distribute indecent images.

R v Jayson: This concluded that the act of deliberately downloading an image from the internet was "making an image".

 

R v Perrin: This brought residents of the UK who use offshore servers for distribution, into the jurisdiction of the UK Law for obscene content.

 

R v Smith (Wallace Duncan): This concluded that a person can be guilty of an offence if a 'substantial part of the crime' was committed in the UK. This was relevant to fraud cases but could be considered for Cases of Incitement to Racial Hatred, as part of the Public Order Act 1986.