New ‘extreme porn’ law throws civil liberties out the window
Some forms of porn are rightly illegal and condemned by all but the people involved. I’m thinking here of child pornography, which in order to be made sees the abuse of a child somewhere. But if the pornography shows an act carried out by two consenting adults, that should be allowed right? Wrong, according to the British government.
The Internet is full of porn. Basically, everywhere you turn, you’re confronted by it. Type the wrong words into a search engine and rather than the results you were expecting, you’ll be confronted by sites offering thrills to people with a whole host of different ideas on what constitutes sex. There’s no doubt the Web has seen niche fetishes become more accessible, and some, such as child pornography are rightly illegal, with the viewers of such hunted down and prosecuted.
But what of all the other niches? Some of which would be regarded as gross, and just plain wrong by some. So long as the acts being portrayed between two consenting adults, the images were rightly legal. But not any longer, at least in the UK. A new law, passed last year, has come into effect today which criminalizes a certain section of society that yesterday were law-abiding citizens.
The new law, known as Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (PDF link) covers what is being classified as “extreme pornography.” This covers images of acts including bestiality and necrophilia, both of which are clearly wrong. But also thrown into the mix are images which are concerned with a danger to life or violent. To be illegal under the new law an image has to fulfill the following criteria:-
1. That the image is pornographic;
2. That the image is grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character, and
3. That the image portrays in an explicit and realistic way, one of the following extreme acts:
- An act which threatens a person’s life;
- An act which results in or is likely to result in serious injury to a person’s anus, breast or genitals;
- An act involving sexual interference with a human corpse,
- A person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive), and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that the people and animals portrayed were real.
While I’m sure there are people reading this wholly in agreement with the new law, I find it repulsive that the British government is seeing fit to legislate against people’s sexual tastes and desires. While rape is an awful crime, rape fantasies and the like are shared by a minority of people who will now find themselves on the wrong side of the law if they dare to look at images of the act being simulated by like-minded people online.
The bill made its way into law because of the killing of Jane Longhurst by Graham Coutts in 2003. Coutts was found to have been a regular visitor to Web sites dedicated to asphyxiation and necrophilia before committing murder.
I have the utmost sympathy for the victim’s mother, who has campaigned tirelessly ever since for stricter controls on what images can be legally viewed on the Web. However, one case where a man who looked at somewhat dodgy images before acting out his fantasies for real doesn’t prove anything. It certainly doesn’t warrant a blanket ban on images that people have been viewing harmlessly for decades.
This law is at risk of criminalizing people in the BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Sadism, and Masochism) community whose activities may at time border on what will now be deemed illegal. Even if it is just a part of their admittedly unconventional sex life. People no longer have full control over their sex lives because the British government seems determined to legislate on every aspect of our once personal freedoms.
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January 27th, 2009
I for one am quite happy about what the British Government has done. Yes, we do have the right to be free, but not when there is a risk that it will harm other people.
January 27th, 2009
Roger Milson above clearly isn’t aware that we already *have* laws to protect people from harm.
There are laws against rape, murder, GBH and so on, so why do we need a new law? Well, actually we don’t.
This law is based on the Precautionary Principle that “we don’t know that this material causes people to do bad things, but we’ll ban it just in case”.
Of course what this actually does is codify a Thought Crime into English law because the Government is saying “We don’t trust you to behave responsibly if you see this stuff, so we’re going to make it illegal, after all, if you don’t see it, you won’t do it…”
This is complete nonsense and, even worse, it criminalises images of *consenting* adults engaged in *legal* sexual activities if, in someone else’s entirely subjective opinion, the image is “pornographic” (ie they think you own it for sexual arousal) “grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene nature” (whatever that means) and is “life threatening or likely to result in serious injury”.
But what is “grossly offensive or disgusting”? How “likely” does that “serious injury” have to be? For that matter, what *is* a “serious injury”?
Even the British Ministry of Justice have admitted that it may not be possible for someone to know if an image they own is on the wrong side of the law or not!
This is legislation based on nothing more than the personal tastes of a bunch of people who think that “I don’t like this, so you should not be allowed to see it” and treats adults like children with the Nanny State telling them what is or isn’t good for them to see.
January 27th, 2009
I’m another person who completly agrees with this law.
But its got to be google behind this not the government.
January 27th, 2009
I agree that we already have plenty of laws ‘protecting’ people from real cases of abuse, coercion and intimidation.
If there is a genuine case that current law does not go far enough then perhaps, but I’d be surprised.
As for the sorts of images they are intending to make illegal (realistic seemingly being the crucial point here, not necessarily reality) that strikes me as a nonsense and by that standard every Hollywood effects dept that ever made a realistic-looking torture or execution scene ought to be worried.
Someone somewhere might be getting off on it.
I prefer we stick to reality.
There’s enough real actual crime to be worrying about, I don’t think we need to go throwing realistic or imagined things into the mix.
I’d far rather people just looked at images of people pretending something unpleasant or horrible than the reality.
It’s my belief that those who are likely to actually recreate and act out those sorts of scenes are unbalanced enough not to need the images to become that vicious or cruel, they already were anyways.
The net conclusion must be that (excuse the very loose description) reality does not follow ‘art’.
January 29th, 2009
This is the “thin end of the wedge”. I can’t believe the government is now telling me what I can and can’t look at on the Internet in order to “get off” in the privacy of my own home.
I’m a submisive who’s into mild S&M. While having sex I get aroused by my partner abusing and humiliating me (and administering a mild beating every now and then – perhaps a few slaps around the face or a few lashes with her belt while I’m restrained/cuffed, and pulling my hair in a rough manner). Will I have to worry about whether or not what I practise in the bedroom is legal?
When I’m single I browse the Internet for various S&M porn sites looking for something to arouse me. While browsing, if I happen to click on a link containing images that are deemed illegal by the powers that be (or a pop-up appears with such an image), will I have to worry about my door being knocked down in the morning and law enforcement officers arresting me and seizing my computer equipment?
I have a video from russian-mistress.com showing a hog tied man (slave) being anally penetrated by a sexy Russian babe wearing a strap-on (she also shoves it in his mouth at the start and slaps him around the face a little). Should I delete this and cancel my subscription to the site?
Perhaps a little off topic, but: I’m having problems with a debt collection agency at the moment. They have recently sent a letter to my apartment saying that they attended my property with the intention to remove goods, and that they would be back to remove goods EVEN IN MY ABSENCE (something they can legally do now, see: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5375668.ece?Submitted=true). The debt they are trying to recover belongs to the previous tenant. Should the bailiff break into my home and take my computer equipment while I”m at work, could I then be arrested in my office and tried for the content I have on my drives (ie. images/videos from russian-mistress.com)?
I have an idea – let’s organise a peaceful demonstration! Oh wait, we can’t now because in the UK the organisers have to pay the bill for police attendance (so much for a free society).
I just returned from a 12 month stay in Russia, and I felt a lot more free there than I do here in the UK. What’s happening in this country is disgraceful. This country used to be a bastion of common sense, but one by one the UK government is stripping people of their civil liberties, and the British people are happy to just bend over and take it. Individuality and the cultivation of free culture is being eroded by insane laws (that I believe are being implemented to distract people from real important issues). Although I loved the movie Equilibrium, I don’t want to live in such a society, and that’s exactly where this country is heading.
March 7th, 2009
To the author:
You little c***sucker are you justified in saying rape videos are right? NO. the people who watch that shit are f**ked up
F**K YOU
October 21st, 2009
wow I thought this kind of 3rd Reich crap only happened in America! Welcome to Empire America, my British Friends hahaha