Wrong home searched due to suspicion of child pornography (10/26/06 7:04 pm)
Due to a misunderstanding the home of a family living in Virginia, USA was recently searched. The police confiscated DVDs, videos and computers when searching for child pornographic material. Afterwards it turned out to be a misunderstanding. The internet service provider used by the family was mistaken regarding the time of the day and allocated the wrong internet access owner.
After the mistake was corrected the proper home was searched and the police discovered the material. The innocent family probably will suffer from the accusation of child pornography for a long time, however.
Comment:
This probably is just one of several incidents which proves that IP addresses can be unreliable for identifying the correct committer when mistakes are being made. In these cases the methods of the entertainment industry which prosecutes piracy by monitoring IP addresses in P2P networks become questionable. Even if the error is corrected eventually the family's reputation cannot be restored as easily.