Pete Townshend’s arrest under UK child protection law

Townshend was arrested on Monday, following a police raid in his house in Richmond, south-west London, which lasted for four hours and was attended by computer forensics experts.

The 57-year-old has admitted giving his credit card details to access a child porn web site. He claims he did so for research purposes only and he denies having downloaded indecent images of children from the internet.

According to the police, Townshend has been arrested under the UK's Protection of Children Act 1978, on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, on suspicion of "making" such images and on suspicion of incitement to distribute them.

The Protection of Children Act was updated to bring it into the computer age by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994. The amended law makes it illegal for anyone to:

• take, or permit to be taken, or to make any indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child; or
• distribute or show such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs; or
• have in his possession such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs, with a view to their being distributed or shown by himself or others; or
• publish or cause to be published any advertisement likely to be understood as conveying that the advertiser distributes or shows such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs, or intends to do so.

Children include those under the age of 16 and those giving the impression that they are under 16. Data stored on a computer disk is also caught if it is capable of conversion into a photograph.

Operation Ore was launched in 2001, after the US Postal Inspection Agency notified British authorities of the results of its investigation into child pornography.

That investigation cracked an internet pornography operation run by Thomas Reedy, a computer consultant in Texas, together with his wife. The site made revenues of around $1 million a month and provided gave access to more than 5,700 child porn sites.

The authorities broke the site's encryption and obtained the credit card details of 75,000 subscribers worldwide. Of those, 7,200 were found to be based in the UK.

Operation Ore has already led to 1,300 arrests of suspected paedophiles in the UK, including 50 policemen, among them two who participated in last summer's inquiry into the murder of two schoolgirls in Soham, England.

Suspects are discovered when their credit card details are passed to the UK police by the FBI. However, this is not enough for a prosecution. Due to fears that some credit card numbers might have been stolen and used by individuals other than their owners, cases can only go to court if evidence of accessing child porn sites is found on the hard drive of a suspect's computer.

The UK police have expressed concerns they lack the resources required for the scale of the operation, and have recently called on the Government to provide more funds. Last month, the Home Office agreed to provide an extra £500,000 to support the operation.