Actually, Pete Townshend was writing a book on the subject of child abuse. The story broke at a time when both the police and the press were on the lookout for more paedophile celebrities in light of the ongoing Jonothan King trial and the Gary Glitter story. He was cautioned simply because he hadn't gone through the proper channels to be able to legally access websites containing child pornography. You need permission to be able to do it, I think. An ex-girlfriend of mines dad was writing a book on the link between the Nazis of 1930s Germany and Neo-Nazism and accessed a site behind a paywall in a similar fashion, prompting a visit from the police (although this was also as a result of him having exactly the same name as the head of the BNP in Birmingham at the time and the police believed there was some correlation). You don't often hear about stuff like that though because accessing Neo-Nazi sites doesn't whip mindless degenerates into a frenzy quite like false accusations of paedophilia do.
Nick wrote:Sort of confused with the mentality behind "legally" accessing a child pornography website....aren't those supposed to be illegal in the first place?
A police officer accessing a website that allegedly contains child pornography would be doing it as part of some kind of sanctioned investigation. If a civilian were to do the same, or wanted similar information as part of an investigation of their own, there will be ways of doing that. Townshend didn't do that, and he was cautioned for it, quite rightly.