This bill came about as a result of the concern over child pornography and the sexual exploitation of children that had arisen in the United States of America in 1977.

[1] This cause was taken up in the UK by the press[2] and Mary Whitehouse, who in a speech in 1977 had accused the Albany Trust of using public money effectively supporting the Paedophile Information Exchange (the project for a joint Albany/PIE pamphlet was scrapped).

[4] Whitehouse's National Viewers' and Listeners' Association was able to campaign in support of the Bill and present a petition bearing 1.5 million signatures.

Photographs or pseudo-photographs found on the Internet may have originated from outside the United Kingdom; to download or print within the jurisdiction is to create new material which hitherto may not have existed therein."

In R v Graham-Kerr (1988), the accused had taken photographs of a young boy at a nudist meeting at a public swimming baths.

In R v Owen (1988), it was held that age of the child in the photograph is a consideration the jury should bear in mind when deciding whether or not the image is "indecent".

A computer file contains data, not visible, which can be converted by appropriate technical means into a screen image and into a print which exactly reproduces the original photograph from which it was derived.

The Court of Appeal concluded that there is no restriction on the nature of a copy, and that the data in a computer file represents the original photograph, in another form.

Although it was agreed that the jury should not use such information to make a judgment regarding the decency of the image for which Mr Mould was convicted, it was understood that "the prosecution [successfully] sought to rely on it in order to prove that the appellant had deliberately created the .bmp file."

This means that, if an item does not appear to be a single photograph, it does not fall within the scope of the Protection of Children Act.

A photocopy or scan of such an item may appear to be a single photograph and so fall under the Act and could therefore be illegal if it shows a child and is judged to be indecent.

They are also barred from working in the legal and medical professions and will be dishonourably discharged from HM Armed Forces.

By the latter test mere foreseeability or likelihood will not suffice (see Nedrick and Woollin) as this encroaches on the notion of recklessness.

Smith and Jayson however were not overtly overruled and Harrison is regarded as made per incuriam or at least a badly worded setting out of the rule found in Woollin.