Although the mere possession of any form of adult pornography is not an offense under Australian law, the possession of child pornography has been criminalized since the early 1990s. Since that time, the Internet has evolved into a vehicle for easily obtaining images of child sexual abuse. Laws that define child pornography vary among Australian States. The Commonwealth law against accessing child pornography combines the depiction of sexual activity or sexual body parts with a test of offensiveness to a reasonable adult person, as well as the depiction of a child in a sexual context that is done in a way that is offensive to a reasonable adult. The essence of a possession charge is that an offender, for his/her own private use, keeps material without exposing it to a wider audience. There is merit in reserving possession prosecutions for those cases that involve images of actual sexual abuse, including sexual posing and explicit sexual posing, rather than other eroticized material, even though some offenders may use less offensive images as part of a fantasy script in committing child sexual assault offenses offline; however, although the sexualization by the viewer of otherwise benign images of children may be objectionable to many, caution should be exercised before criminalizing the possession of such images based only on what transpires in the viewers mind when viewing the images. 12 references