Blenheim District Court has refused to grant home detention to a Picton man found with more than 10,000 child abuse images on his computer.
Stephen George Fry, 54, was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail on Wednesday.
The service station attendant had earlier admitted to 10 charges of distributing and 20 charges of possessing objectionable publications.
The Department of Internal Affairs, which initiated the prosecution, says it was alerted to Fry's activities after they were detected in the United States.
The court was told that Fry had been distributing the images since 2005 on the internet.
