ALBANY — Pervs, beware.
Gov. Cuomo yesterday signed into law a bill making it a felony to visit a Web site with the intent to view child porn — thus closing a legal loophole that had effectively let child-porn viewers get away with it.
In May, the state Court of Appeals ruled that a 1996 state law barring possession of child porn applied only to downloaded files, not to the temporary files automatically stored on a hard drive upon entering a site.
Under the new law, accessing a Web site with the intent to view child porn is now a Class-E felony.
“Criminals,” the governor said, “have been able to escape prosecution and punishment for too long.”