As part of the Operation Ore investigations, Townshend was cautioned by the police in 2003 after acknowledging a credit card access in 1999 to the Landslide website alleged to advertise child pornography. He stated in the press and on his website that he had been engaged in research for A Different Bomb (a now-abandoned book based on an anti-child pornography essay published on his website in January 2002) and his autobiography, and as part of a campaign against child pornography.
The police searched his house and confiscated 14 computers and other materials, and after a four-month forensic investigation confirmed that they had found no evidence of child abuse images. Consequently, the police offered a caution rather than pressing charges, issuing a statement: "After four months of investigation by officers from Scotland Yard's child protection group, it was established that Mr Townshend was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images." In a statement issued by his solicitor, Townshend said, "I accept that I was wrong to access this site, and that by doing so, I broke the law, and I have accepted the caution that the police have given me." As a statutory consequence of accepting the caution, Townshend was entered on the Violent and Sex Offender Register for five years.
In April 2007, an article in The Guardian stated that Townshend was "falsely accused of accessing child pornography". After obtaining copies of the Landslide hard drives and tracing Townshend's actions, investigative journalist Duncan Campbell wrote in PC Pro Magazine, "Under pressure of the media filming of the raid, Townshend appears to have confessed to something he didn't do." Campbell states that their entire evidence against Townshend was that he accessed a single site among the Landslide offerings which was not connected with child pornography.