OT: legal obligations

[keith]

On Wed, 2008-16-01 at 13:42 -0500, John McGregor wrote:
> Hi Folk,
>          I repair PCs for a living and since most members of the public
> think that a back up is something you do when you put a car in reverse,
> this often entails digging through an old hard drive trying to recover
> files. I was doing just that on the weekend when news of the recent
> arrests for child porn activities were announced. This got me to
> wondering what my, and other computer techs', obligations are if we find
> illegal content when doing a similar search? Thoughts?
> 
> John

In the case of child porn, I'm pretty sure that a detective or
prosecutor would act on the assumption that if you find this stuff on a
system in your immediate physical possession, you are in possession of
it; and if you don't report it then you are party to the offense. There
is no legal protection except for reporting it.
As for software, including operating systems, programs, applications or
downloaded files, you would only be obligated to report it's existence
if you _*knew*_ that a copyright offense is being committed (i.e.- that
the software is being used in contravention of copyright laws).

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