Venturing into terra incognita on computer-assisted crime, U.S. District Judge Sue L. Robinson last week pronounced a sentence that sounded more like a question.

Before her stood Christian L Mittermayr, a fired post-doctoral chemistry researcher at the University of Delaware, convicted of downloading hundreds of child pornography images onto his office computer. His white jumpsuit ironically read “DOC” across the back — not for his academic degree but for Department of Correction.