By Evan Stoumbelis:

Recently the bill to make MMA legal in New York failed, leaving the MMA community angry and confused. However, yesterday the New York Court of Appeals ruled that viewing child pornography is no longer a criminal offense. MMA fans are left to wonder why MMA is illegal, but the viewing of child pornography is legal. The law says that viewing child pornography doesn’t qualify as possesssion of it, as long as the content isn’t downloaded.

In 2009, college professor James Kent was sentenced to 1 year in prison on several counts of promoting and possessing child pornography. After an appeal the court ruled that due to the fact that he viewed the content, instead of downloading it, several of the counts were dismissed.

Bloodyelbow.com’s Steph Daniels brought this story to light yesterday.

[box_light]The National Post reported on the ruling in question today. The ruling is directly linked to a 2009 case involving college professor James D. Kent, who was sentenced to prison for several counts of possessing a sexual performance of a child and promoting a sexual performance of a child. The appeals court dismissed one count of promoting and one count of possession due to the fact that the images were only viewed online, and not downloaded. Current law states that viewing the image on the internet does not constitute possession, and is therefore not illegal.[/box_light]