There's no arguing that the Internet has made the world a much smaller place. For example, rather than relying on snail mail, you can now electronically send a letter to someone on the other side of the planet in the blink of an eye.
In another example, you could be a cop in Georgia and view the kiddy-porn a guy in Scottsdale has on his computer from about 2,000 miles away.
Unfortunately for cyber-pervs, those are the breaks.
This is a concept 60-year-old Mark Spiegelman, of Scottsdale, allegedly learned the hard way.
According to court documents obtained by New Times, on March 22, a
detective in the Georgia Bureau of Investigations was patrolling a P2P
(person-to-person for the non-computer-nerd crowd) file sharing network
when he noticed a user with the handle "AZMAN107."
P2P networks allow someone to download things like music or images from
another person's computer who is also on the network. It also allows
someone to download things like pictures and videos of children having
sex, which was the case for Siegelman, authorities claim.
The detective in Georgia was able to download 29 images of kiddy-porn
and obtain a partial download of a movie, where a prepubescent girl can
be seen masturbating, from Siegelman's computer.
The detective, not knowing the identity of the person from whom he had
pirated the porn, subpoenaed Cox Communications to get the IP address of
the computer, which led him to Siegelman.
The detective alerted the Scottsdale Police Department, which arrested Siegelman last night at his house.
Siegelman's been charged with 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.