Pete Townshend Cleared of Child Porno Charges, But Will Still Be Registered Sex Offender

I guess he, um, won:

That registration was part of a formal police caution Townshend received for accessing a Web site containing images of child abuse.

Townshend was arrested in January on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children. The arrest was part of Operation Ore, an FBI-led crackdown on Internet child pornography.

After a four-month investigation, London’s Metropolitan Police said Wednesday the rocker “was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images” but had accessed a site containing such images in 1999.

The musician acknowledged using his credit card to enter a Web site advertising child pornography but said he was doing research for his autobiography.

….Police said it was not a defense “to access these images for research or out of curiosity.”

As part of the cautioning procedure, Townshend’s fingerprints, photograph and a DNA sample will be taken by police and he will be placed on a national sex offender registry for five years. [AP]

More on the case here, here, here, and here.