On the March 18th 2004 formal conditions to bring the Convention of the European Council on Cybercrime into force were met. On the same day Polish Parliament passed a new law adjusting respective internal criminal regulations to the decisions of the Convention (changes to the Polish Penal Code from March 18th 2004, Dz. U. Nr 69, position 626).
According to a new law, possessing of the child pornography became punishable crime. The introduction was made independently of the kind of the carrier on which such contents were consolidated.
The second novum was raising the age border to 18 in cases of children to be used in production and proliferation of child pornography. As stated above, this change, however, concerns only production of “a professional” character that is carried out in order to spread the pornographic materials (art. 202 § 3 of Penal Code). However, the age of 15 (art. 202 § 4 of Penal Code) was kept as the age border for consolidating, bringing, keeping or possessing the pornographic contents for purposes of a not public distributing character (for example for a personal use). Also the idea of penalizing producing pornographic materials presenting unreal children (morphing technology) was rejected (Adamski A. 2004).
