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Man Accuses Cat of Downloading Child Porn 174

Posted by samzenpus from the when-pets-go-bad dept.
bruce_the_loon writes "They have blamed viruses. They have blamed neighbors. They have accused police of planting it. In rare cases, they have admitted downloading it. This is the first time someone has accused a cat of downloading child porn onto their computer. This seems like a defense almost too stupid to be made up."

*

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Man Accuses Cat of Downloading Child Porn More

Man Accuses Cat of Downloading Child Porn

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  • I Sympathise with the Cat (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:10PM (#29012821)
    Don't we all want to see 12 year old pussy every once in a while?

  • This happens a lot (Score:5, Funny)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:11PM (#29012835)

    You shouldn't let your cat surf the web unattended. Without proper supervision, they will start downloading kitty porn to your hard drive.

  • i think you mean (Score:3, Funny)

    by loafula ( 1080631 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:11PM (#29012843)
    kitty porn. bad, i know. lol

  • PedoCat? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Faryshta ( 1362521 )
    Everyone knows cats only get internet for twitter and upload pics of themselves. Bears on the other hand are to be take care of.

  • The purrrrrrrrfect ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by neonprimetime ( 528653 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:14PM (#29012909)
    ...alibi

  • At least he didn't blame his child for downloading kitty porn.

    http://www.livenudecats.com/lnc.php?page=allnude/specialdelivery [livenudecats.com]

    Never trust a petophile.

  • There is software to protect against this... (Score:3, Informative)

    by sean_nestor ( 781844 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:18PM (#29012981) Homepage
    No kidding [bitboost.com]

    When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer. This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it.

    PawSense is a software utility that helps protect your computer from cats. It quickly detects and blocks cat typing, and also helps train your cat to stay off the computer keyboard.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That has to be one smart filter to detect the difference between a normal vi or emacs command stream and cat steps.

      ESC W - CTRL-A :.-3,.+4s/a/z/g

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by i_liek_turtles ( 1110703 )
      I've learned that leaving your cat unattended with your keyboard can lead to interesting consequences. --Dexter Douglas

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by swanzilla ( 1458281 )
      bitboost.com's PawSense is available for Windows 95/98/ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Vista....I guess that pretty much eliminates everyone here.

    • Re:There is software to protect against this... (Score:4, Funny)

      by muyla ( 1429487 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:59PM (#29013683)

      From the software FAQ:

      Q: My cat is deaf. Can you help me?

              A: PawSense detects the paws of even deaf cats. Even if a cat is deaf, PawSense blocks cat typing once detected. This makes it harder for the cat to mess up your programs, data files, and operating system.

              However, PawSense does not include a miracle cure for deafness.

      1 - How stupid can a person be before he is legally considered handicaped?
      2 - I wonder how much they charge extra for the deluxe package with miracle cure included!

      • Re:There is software to protect against this... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ifni ( 545998 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @01:25PM (#29014075) Homepage

        I'm guessing that the question is in regards to the deterrence feature, which is likely some loud noise or pre-recorded cat-hiss, that the program emits when it detects a cat on your keyboard. From the linked page: If a cat gets on the keyboard, PawSense makes a sound that annoys cats. This teaches your cat that getting on the keyboard is bad even if humans aren't watching.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by bentcd ( 690786 )

          This teaches your cat that getting on the keyboard is bad even if humans aren't watching.

          Or more likely, given that this is cats we're talking, it trains your cat to walk on your keyboard in patterns that won't be caught by the software.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kidbro ( 80868 )

        1 - How stupid can a person be before he is legally considered handicaped?

        I know you jest, but if you actually happen to be interested it is - grossly simplified - at an IQ of about 70 [wikipedia.org]. IQ far from tells the entire picture, but at least where I live (Sweden), the state (and other state related functions) is obliged by law to provide certain extra help to people with an IQ sub 70. The tests are usually (possibly always?) administered by a psychologist that also weighs in their professional opinion about the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )

      When cats walk or climb on your keyboard, they can enter random commands and data, damage your files, and even crash your computer. This can happen whether you are near the computer or have suddenly been called away from it.

      And if you're not careful, attempting to delete it can turn you into a Freakazoid! [imdb.com]

      @[=g3,8d]\&fbb=-q]/hk%fg

    • Cats may indeed have leet scripting skill, so far they've been undetected in their pwnership of the internets. with the exception of the webcam shots they send each other with lolspeak captions. All your base will belong to kitty.

      they can enter random commands and data, damage your files

      Er not on windows. If you have a shell open you plausibly could end up with rm -rf [wildcard] or [anycommand] > /dev/sda (ouch!)

      • I'm pretty sure they could manage to press the delete key and then enter on your important documents (shift-delete if they're really good).

        Or hold backspace on your open word document (quite a few people don't know that "undo" also works for deletions, surprisingly).

  • Appropriate comic (Score:4, Funny)

    by HEbGb ( 6544 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:22PM (#29013043)

    http://lol-comics.livejournal.com/63218.html [livejournal.com]

  • lol cat (Score:5, Funny)

    by ExE122 ( 954104 ) * on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:23PM (#29013063) Homepage Journal
    I can haz blame?

  • Chris Hansen should interview the cat (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:25PM (#29013111)

    He'll get to the bottom of this.

      "You walk in here on all fours naked making strange noises and rubbing against my leg..who knows what would have happened if I hadn't been here"

  • This is why I don't own a cat (Score:4, Funny)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:31PM (#29013229) Homepage
    The article doesn't mention that the cat left a note for the man warning him of dire consequences if it didn't get fresh fish more frequently.

  • Florida (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NeverTheMachine ( 1612583 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:34PM (#29013281)
    I live there, in that town. It seems like a ton of retarded news stories come from not only here, but Florida in general.

    I feel embarrassed saying I'm from Florida sometimes.

    • Re:Florida (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cashman73 ( 855518 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:43PM (#29013441) Journal
      I live there, in that town. It seems like a ton of retarded news stories come from not only here, but Florida in general. I feel embarrassed saying I'm from Florida sometimes.

      Yep,... that's why the state has it's own Fark tag [fark.com],... =)

    • Is it possible? I guess. Just dropping something on my keyboard I've had improbable keystrokes take place, and that only triggered 2-3 "clicks." A cat could generate a LOT of clicks, a bunch of it could be valid input (enter, spacebar, mouseclick, tab, mouse move, etc).

      As a juror, would I buy it? No. Though it does raise a doubt, I wouldn't feel it a reasonable one. It's too improbable, and I doubt they would be able to replicate the scenario in a court room.

      But to play devil's advocate...

      The guy coul

      • Re:Florida (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TheCarp ( 96830 ) * <sjc AT carpanet DOT net> on Monday August 10, 2009 @01:37PM (#29014281) Homepage

        Of course, then reality sets in. The best refutation I can think of is the amounts. If the car downloaded thousands of kiddie porn images, then there should be lots of other kinds of images (perhaps 100s of thousands) along with them.

        Now, I have downloaded a fair amount of porn myself since I was 16 and first got online (15 years now! wow...) anyway.... in that time, how many times, looking for porn or not, did I stumble on child porn.

        The answer: Once. While on usenet and doing the old "download multiple messages and string them together" on my Apple 2 GS which took about 5 minutes to render a JPG in black and white online... well...

        I built up a collection in those days... and one of those pictures it turned out was child porn (which wasn't evident until it was viewed on a more powerful machine with much better resolution, and in color years later)

        So one, out of, several thousand images over 15 years, was child porn. It turned up on usenet.... which nobody really uses for porn anymore as far as I know.

        I MIGHT believe this guy if a handful... 2 or 3 or something images were downloaded. I might even believe he did it himself accidentally. However.... this argument just doesn't fit the evidence.

        The only other way it would make sense is if it was taken from the cache of a freenet node he was running. However, I would think a specific case like that would be mentioned in the article, and would not necessitate the "cat story"
        .
        -Steve

        • I downloaded a lot of porn , and I stumbled onto once on a bulletin board on an attachment which read "12eat12!". That is it. I read somewhere there is next to no child porn on publicly available internet web page. In reality they are mostly transported physically (hard drive, CD, USB , laptop...) or on darknet and similar.

      • As a juror, would I buy it? No. Though it does raise a doubt, I wouldn't feel it a reasonable one. It's too improbable, and I doubt they would be able to replicate the scenario in a court room.
        But to play devil's advocate...
        The guy could've had a Search Engine up, perhaps searching for ordinary/legal trash. He walks away and the cat jumps on desk and initiates a click-action on one of the bad links that can come up in the search-noise. Perhaps while taking a number of steps on the keyboard, or perhaps lying down on the thing and mashing keys. The resulting actions click on the bad link on the search results, click another link for images (perhaps a zip of a sampler"), and the next thing you know it's on his computer. And if it happened while a P2P client was up, then it's probably more possible as it might've clicked into a remote user's folders and did a download-all.

        That gives me an idea...
        Let this guy get aquitted on the basis of his cat.
        All child porn fans would then get cats.
        Then we arrest everyone with a cat because they must be downloading child porn!

  • Imagine the chaos that a cat could cause if one-click ordering is enabled.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by stewbee ( 1019450 )

      Imagine the chaos that a cat could cause if one-lick ordering is enabled.

      fixed that for you....Thank you, thank you very much. I will be here all week. Don't forget to tip the waitstaff..

  • the sad part is that this guy will probably get off with a slap on the wrist (no pun intended).
  • The funny is so greatly epic I blew a LOLfuze and can no longer laugh.

  • kitty porn?

  • This proves it! (Score:4, Funny)

    by travdaddy ( 527149 ) <travo@[ ]uxmail.org ['lin' in gap]> on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:44PM (#29013455)
    Dogs As Intelligent As Average Two-Year-Old Children [slashdot.org].

    But a cat is capable of using the Internet (not to mention framing his owner). Sorry, dog owners, cats are clearly smarter!

  • And for sure he used.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by ctrl-alt-canc ( 977108 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:45PM (#29013477)
    netcat.
  • A kitty hitting keys at random on a keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely download 10,000 child porn images.

  • Note to self (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10, 2009 @12:47PM (#29013511)
    Note to self -- get a cat.
  • I thought we weren't supposed to visit Idle - ever.

  • Makes jury duty attractive (Score:4, Funny)

    by smchris ( 464899 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @01:01PM (#29013719)

    If counties were smart, they'd have a "serve one, get a second silly one" deal.

  • Uh oh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bughunter ( 10093 ) <bughunter.earthlink@net> on Monday August 10, 2009 @01:26PM (#29014103) Journal

    I have over 1 Quadrillion pornographic images on my computer.

    Yes, I'm a Petaphile.

  • It's really hard to get child porn charges dropped these days, with the whole "pedo witch hunt" in full swing these days. I'm surprised the cat was cleared of it's charges. It's lawyer must be brilliant!

  • CD Behind radiator (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shadowknot ( 853491 ) * on Monday August 10, 2009 @01:39PM (#29014313) Homepage Journal
    Working in digital forensics you hear all the ridiculous defenses dreamed up by crazy suspects and defense lawyers but this one is pretty out there! One case a colleague of mine involved the usual defense of "a trojan did it" but this was his defense for how a CD-R marked "best stuff" had gotten from the spindle on his desk, into his machine, appropriated a copy of the illicit images on his computer (which he then moved to the recycle bin!) and then hidden itself behind a radiator in a jewel case. Amazing what a little knowledge (and I do mean a very can do!
    • Those damn USC graduates! Worse than cats.

    • Re:CD Behind radiator (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @02:30PM (#29015035) Homepage

      One case a colleague of mine involved the usual defense of "a trojan did it"

      I'm rather surprised trojans don't do it more often. It seems like a pretty viable extortion scheme:

      1. Infect victim's PC
      2. Download loads of kiddy porn to various places on the PC
      3. Email the victim: "ILLEGAL CHILD PORNOGRAPHY DETECTED ON YOUR PC at C:\WINDOWS\KIDDYPORN AND OTHER LOCATIONS. Send us $100 to purchase cleanup tool within 5 days, or the police will be notified"
      4. Wait 5 days, collect money from victim, or if no money, send an 'anonymous tip' to the police
      5. Evil profit!
      • Oh man, you're not my boss are you? If he ever saw that plan he'd learn to code pretty fast!

      • Probably no need to actually notify the police in the event of non-payment. Maybe better having it randomly flash up an image with a reminder they need to pay for the "cleaning software". I think a lot of people would pay to make THAT stop.

        However the main problem is that receiving money from people is hard to do without being traceable by the police.

        And this kind of trojan would get you charged with unlawful use of a computer as well as distribution of child pornography images.

        Probably the potential reward

    • Re:CD Behind radiator (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @02:50PM (#29015281) Homepage

      I would like to get into computer forensics, but I'm afraid I would be spending all my time going after dirty old men, rather than prosecuting real crimes with real victims and damages. Worse than that, I'm afraid I would be forced to attempt to make cases against people who had no intention of downloading illegal content at all (does a 17year 11month old girl look any different from an 18 year old?).

      So as someone who has worked in the industry, I ask you: is modern computer Forensics at all about prosecuting serious crime, or is it just playing porno police? What is your caseload like? The idea of having a hand in ruining someones life for looking at a picture of a sexually mature female just seems immoral to me, and I would want no hand in it.

      • Re:CD Behind radiator (Score:5, Informative)

        by shadowknot ( 853491 ) * on Monday August 10, 2009 @03:18PM (#29015631) Homepage Journal

        I would like to get into computer forensics, but I'm afraid I would be spending all my time going after dirty old men, rather than prosecuting real crimes with real victims and damages. Worse than that, I'm afraid I would be forced to attempt to make cases against people who had no intention of downloading illegal content at all (does a 17year 11month old girl look any different from an 18 year old?).

        So as someone who has worked in the industry, I ask you: is modern computer Forensics at all about prosecuting serious crime, or is it just playing porno police? What is your caseload like? The idea of having a hand in ruining someones life for looking at a picture of a sexually mature female just seems immoral to me, and I would want no hand in it.

        That's a damn fine question and there are cases where it is very borderline but those cases either don't make it to court or there is a plea bargain struck where some kind of community service is involved (generally not with children!). Also, though I would say about 70% of the work the company I work for gets is Indecent Images related there is work involving differing crimes including fraud, drugs, rape, murder and people smuggling. I will not lie and say I agree with the dragnet approach our customers (mostly Police forces) seize computers and often there are many hundreds of superfluous hours of analysis poured into a case that has no merit (I had a case with 70ish exhibits in that took months of processing and ended up completely negative) but, if you can handle trawling through gigs of porn, it is a rewarding career. I would advise you not do an academic qualification in the field but get some (or use your existing) real-world computing experience and build your analytical and written skills then apply for a trainee post if you can find one. Learn the tools if you can afford it (EnCase and FTK are both hellishly expensive but the individual training courses (CF1 and CF2 for EnCase) are fairly affordable and useful for a noob). I wish you luck in your future career should you get into the industry!

  • What species of baby does god kill? [wikipedia.org]

    • Human Babies, that is why God hasn't stopped abortion, it makes his job easier when dealing with Cat Masturbation.

      He just subtracts the number of abortions from the cat M-count, then tops off the rest the children from third world countries.

      Damn cats, they are colluding with God in an effort to remove the human race.

  • I smell a new defense against downloading copyrighted material! It's those damn cats! (I suspect a few weasels may be involved as well.) First, and infinite number of them got in a room and developed P2P filesharing, next they distributed said product with a clever cat-based GUI that closely resembles a human-oriented GUI. What will they do next after they have destroyed the foundation of intellectual property? ... *shiver* ... will they ... *gasp* ... start investment banks? ... run for Congress? ...

  • I AM IN YUR COMPUTER (Score:3, Funny)

    by jameskojiro ( 705701 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @01:54PM (#29014543) Journal

    DOWNLOADING YUR PR0N....

    So quoth the Almighty LOL-Cat

  • ..but did his cat also drop the pr0n into folders classified by sub-genre?

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @02:03PM (#29014695)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The cat being intelligent as it is, was quite finished with his current master, having set him up to take the fall, he had inserted some hidden p0rn and anonymously contacted the feds. He is now surfing the web at his leisure...

    In other news, there has been a new type of post on Craigslist getting attention, Cats Looking For New Masters....picture included!

  • ...will he be sentenced in Cat years?
  • Play him off, keyboard cat...

  • Need a new cat (Score:4, Funny)

    by SnarfQuest ( 469614 ) on Monday August 10, 2009 @03:06PM (#29015483)

    My cat only downloads articles from wikipedia. Mostly stuff on herbs and computer pointing devices. Guess I need a cat that hasn't been spayed.

  • you can leave an unattended mouse around a cat.

  • Well, the burden of proof is on the prosecution!

    Of course, it doesn't work quite that way, but it would be hilarious if we could see a Dirk Gentry-esque explanation to exactly how this could or couldn't have happened...

  • When I saw this guy's defense, I couldn't help but wonder if he read Slashdot when a post featured a device to let cats click your EULAs for you. http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/02/18/1817221/Dont-Like-EULAs-Get-Your-Cat-To-Agree-To-Them?art_pos=1 [slashdot.org]
  • His dog did the downloading and set the cat up to take the fall.

  • The fix is to change the operating system [wordpress.com].

  • Play him off, Keyboard Cat.

  • I think this is a weekend story. But what upsets me is that most out there stories come from my favourite state :(

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