What about...
What about those episodes of Star Trek: Voyager with hot Vulcan on Klingon Pon Farr action!
It seems likely that the government thought that passing a new law on extreme porn would be the last word on the matter. Recent events in Birmingham suggest that this may not quite be the case. Restrictions on the possession of material deemed to be “extreme” and “pornographic” were introduced in the Criminal Justice Bill in …
Hands up every teenager / male who owns porn. (You all do don't deny it)
Hands up every teenager / male brave enough to admit to their parents / partner they have a porn stash.
Now hands up any teenager / male brave enough to take that collection to the local police station to ask them their advice on that porn stash...
What no hands?
I am comforted by the comment that CPS and law courts decide, not politicians. At least then reality has a chance to kick in.
"However, they further pointed out that when it came to interpreting the law, Ministerial statements were largely worthless."
So nothing new there then!
I do like the name of the opposition group, "Backlash"! I take it, there is a very obvious reason why they have that name?!
Could the Criminal Law Justice Unit please explain a 100% foolproof method of completely deleting and/or destroying digital data to us? It occurs to me that if I own an image which is now illegal, merely telling Windows to delete it will not remove it completely from my hard drive; and I could still technically be prosecuted for it.
I'm too busy re-evaluating my art collection to think up witty comment.
At least with the change from 16 to 18 it was easy to define what was what - not very easy to confirm of course, but with this b*ll*cks no-one has a clue what the basic definition is, let alone whether an individual image contravenes...
This is not a traditional law, British subjects, for the use of, as used between 1000-2000 AD. It is a Police State Enabling law.
It will not be applied to anyone unless they come to the attention of the authorities, perhaps for walking down the street after a pub fight, for leaving the lid of your rubbish bin open after 6:00pm, or for just being lippy.
Then, as well as trying to do you for any real or imagined crime they were called away from their nice warm Police Station for, they will search your home looking for the odd joint (Drug Baron), dirty picture (Porn King) or A-Z (Terrorist Bomber). That lets them take all your money under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
It will not surprise anyone to find that the recipients of this service will predominantly be in possession of thick curly hair, dark skin, or a burka.
With all these opportunities, I wonder why the Police made such a fuss about needing to lock people up for 42 days without charge. I had assumed that it was because it takes 6 weeks for the average black eye, multiple contrusions and broken ribs to heal.
Plod; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's not extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's not extreme; That's extreme; WOW! That's _really_ extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme and That's extreme. Right Sir, You're nicked.
If there was a positive correlation, then locking up XY men would save XX women from being raped. Of course that leads to (XY-XX) men being locked up unjustly.
So (XX-XY) people's lives are better because of this law. So say 10000 men are locked up and one *would* have gone on to commit 2 rapes, that means that -9998 (negative 9998) people's lives are better as a result of this law.
But now what happens when the Japanese study on this is considered, men who use porn (including stuff classed as extreme) are less likely to commit rape (basically their lust is satiated). Well then 10000 peoples lives are worse by this law, and changing the threshold of 'extreme' has no bearing on the outcome, if you define it so that a million men are locked up, it would still have no positive effect.
So it makes no difference where the threshold is set, it could be set as 'show of ankle = extreme' and it would never have a net positive effect. The definition of extreme has no bearing on the problem it is supposed to fix. So instead the threshold will be set according to politicians beliefs systems.
So we get some fat ugly men hating slappers in power and 100,000 men will be in jail unjustly, or we get a more worldly experienced mixture of men and women in relationships and 100 men are unjustly locked up. No matter what there is no positive outcome from this. At the base of it, consenting adults are doing stuff to other consenting adults and other consenting adults are viewing it for sexual excitement and nothing in that has anything to do with Hm.gov.
It's easy. The proposal defines 'extreme' content as the visual depiction of
"(a) an act which threatens a person’s life
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
(c) an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or
(d) 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 any such person or animal was real."
All you have to do is train as a medical doctor, spend several years gaining experience in an A&E or Trauma unit, work as a Police surgeon and/or forensic pathologist for a while, cross qualify as a vet just to be sure, then gain legal status as an expert witness in such matters. You then MIGHT just be capable of deciding if the content you have (whoops) already viewed, on a website which is perfectly legal in its country of origin and hosting, could fall into one of the above categories and thus render you open to criminal charges and subsequent loss of employment, end of marriage, arrival of neighbourhood mob with flaming torches...
Mine's the slightly grubby white coat with the stethoscope in the pocket.
From TFA: "However, they further pointed out that when it came to interpreting the law, Ministerial statements were largely worthless. The courts would look at what was written into statute: not what was handed out in the press releases."
This point needs to be repeated and drummed home into public understanding - the *only* thing which matters is what the *law* says. It was not the government's (stated) intention when passing RIPA to enable councils to spy on people who applied for places for their children in popular schools.
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so some pictures will be illegal and ultimately it will be tested in court ! isn't this just censorship enforced by law ? Who is harmed by pictures? If illegal acts are distributed in picture form its all the easier to find out who is responsible, certainly more so than if they never made the pictures in the first place. There is no "harm" in having these pictures per se, and the law is purely a populace controlling one.
The only reasonable way to handle this would be to distribute a set of limit samples to all police stations, so that they know what is allowed within the law and what is prohibited.
These limits samples should consist of images that are "only just allowed" (only moderately nasty) and images that are "prohibited but only just" (Extreme - but not THAT Extreme).
Every police officer should then spend some time getting familiar with both sets of images so that they will be able to make informed judgment in stead of just going by what their personal preferences are.
Ideally a special "field kit" including a subset of these images could be carried by every police officer, so they can make comparisons in the field when encountering potentially extreme porn images in church murals etc.
An online version would make it easy for "Joe Public" to compare his filth with the official Extremity guideline.
as the guy said - it's just a law that the police will use as a tick box to arrest someone they don't like.
child pronz? No
anything that a weird person may fap too that includes people that maybe children? (swimming videos. gymnatics, etc) no
potential terrorist material? Nope
extreme pronz? Woohoo we got a tick, you're going on the sex offenders register!
Soon add, drawings of something that may be a child or flat chest in pronzor?
Face it, you upset the filth (police or politicians) your going to jail.
If more than two thousand people do it worldwide then it can't be extreme can it, because thousands of people do it.
Thus, spanking etc bondage, and S&M aren't extreme.
However, eating the shit from rent boys is extreme, thus, if the rent boy photographed the politician eating shit, then he's committing an offence, but the politician eating shit isn't, because he's not photographed it.
This will be my defence in court for possessing spanking pictures. I'll call Mark Oaten as a witness. I'll ask the Jury if they think my possession of porn is worse than his actual behaviour, and then ask them why I'm being prosecuted while he walks free.
I do however, have a question. If you're filming yourself having sex with your girlfriend, and she dies during the act, are you then guilty of possession of images of necrophilia.
I foresee the government looking unbelievably stupid here.
Great article (obviously we're biased ;) ) and wonderful to read so many agreeable messages in response. We're still shocked how many people do not realise the porn law is changing.
CAAN are collecting images for advice seeking missions as well as people to get involved behind the scenes and on missions, please help if you can.
For more information or to join in with actions, either on the streets or from what's left of the privacy of your own home, please contact Consenting Adult Action Network at c-a-a-n@live.co.uk or visit our webpage at http://consentingadultactionnet.spaces.live.com/
Except the 16/18 criteria for "indecent" images is the only clear thing about that particular legislation. Nobody can tell you what indecent means, and you might not know that anyone would think something indecent until the Home Office produced the Paedofinder General to testify in your case. It is not what you think matters but what someone wreathed in official expertise can persuade a court under the circumstances.
The new law, while still madly overbroad claptrap, is a darn sight clearer than that.
I note that the web's most downloaded woman's homepage now features two videos which will shortly be illegal on a par with animal porn.
One is a spoof of 24, the other of Hitman. Both feature women getting it on with guns aimed at them. I cannot see any clearer evidence that this law goes too far.
Is an image of a carcrash extreme porn?
- No!
What if you can clearly see that there are dead and/or injured people in the car?
- Again No
What if somebody gets turned on by viewing it? (somebody did get hurt)
- Nooo...?
What if some of the bodies seen on the image are naked?
- Don't 'no'?
... and underage?
- ?
What if a cartoon shows a man looking at an image of a carcrash while jerking off?
Please send all your Extreme images to everyone that voted Yes to the bill. Then they can tell you what they intended.
I'm going to email my entire Pron collection to my MP, the Home Office, my local police station etc, so they can vet them and send me the clean ones back.
Wonder what kind of a drain on resources it would be if everyone did that?
Alternatively, just print out a few examples (couple of hundred should do) with the words "Is this legal" printed on it and send them in plain brown envelopes to the above people/organisations to vet.
"Therefore, if government assurances that the new law criminalised nothing that was not already illegal to publish, those attending the demonstration should be safe."
If the new law really "criminalised nothing that was not already illegal" then why the f**k do we need to have a new law? Why not just ..... oh, I don't know ..... enforce the existing ones?
And if there was some problem with enforcing the existing laws, then how is merely creating a new law going to help?
Obviously, they should offer a hotline, where you can submit (e.g. by mail, email, or fax) your smut and then the police specialists can sort it through and give their objective thumbs up or down. The younger, highly motivated police stuff should be capable of browsing a considerable amount of pics/day if offered appropriately private workspace!
Then they should stamp the non-offending stuff with some CrownSOAP (seal of approval) to make sure it won't be misidentified in the future. Long live the Queen!
"This change in the law meant that people had to consider and, if necessary, delete or destroy material which until then had been legal to possess.”
When the law came into effect a few years ago I always wondered what libraries that keep old newspapers would do with their back issues of The Sun, which used to regularly feature 16 and 17 year olds on page 3. Not to mention the newspaper themselves archive, which will now contain lots of "child porn". Maybe The Mirror could do an expose on them.
But check your parts boxes for old HDDs from systems from your teenage years. are they PROPERLY erased? Not just formatted!
Seriously, I one cracked a Danish extreme BDSM site and pretty much every JPEG would have you nicked under this bollocks (I refer you all to Dodgy Geezer's post - I feel exactly the same) and I got umm..... Well, it took 20 hours on dialup with Teleport Pro. 10 years ago. There might have been more but the connection was dropped and I didn't want to risk a hefty phone bill.
Of course, having struck digital gold (I was a randy young buck of 16) I subsequently lost it all to a drive failure. But then along came P2P and the "Pornoholic" years. :-)
Serious bit: The Gov. wants a fucked up fragmented weakened mass of individuals (as opposed to "society") that don't cause democracy and whose views are fed to them daily by media and sensationalist labels (like "Extreme Pornography User!"). They have a flawless track record in intelligently undermining democracy in all its forms, while "spinning" things to look like they are intending the opposite.
Therefore it can be said with some certainty that this law is intended partly as a psychological tool. Perhaps by denying people the ability to freely explore all areas of the human psyche, they are attempting to weaken the ability of poeple to form rational, thoughtful, intelligent opinions on "emotive" issues like this?
As an added bonus, Mr + Mrs Daily Dumbness will simply not bother to give consideration to "Users of Extreme Pornography" and their representatives, should they ever come across discussion of, or information about the issues. Especially since Extreme Pornography is a Gateway Porn to harder, even more illegal types of Porn. It was OK when it was legal, though. You know, like Pot is a gateway drug. Good thing we (the people, globally united, in joyfull democracy, remember?) dealt with that by banning it, leaving our happy heroin-free ethanol-drenched utopia!
Plod; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's not extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's not extreme; That's extreme; WOW! That's _really_ extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme; That's extreme and That's extreme. *Twitch* *moan* "Would you pass the kleenex please?"
I mess around with CGI.
The prosecutors would hate having me on a jury on one of these cases. I can recognise all the standard CGI models of women.
Few of the people who make the CGI porn images seem to bother to change the faces.
Oh, and I used to be a farmer. I've some idea how real animals stand and walk.
Finally, and this may be a 5-point quirk, I find it quite easy to look at a "shocking" image and ask rational questions about how real it is. Why isn't the jet of blood pulsing with the heart?
It has been stated in one of the referenced El. Reg. articles "UK to outlaw cartoons of child sexual abuse" from 28th May that several police forces would like to outlaw "Manga" under this legislation, and then it gave a wholy inaccurate description of Manga.
Manga is effectivly a generic term like "Comic" is in English. Like "Comic", there can be many different genres of Manga. I very much doubt that anybody would equate "Viz" with "Bunty" (if it is still published), and the term also covers "Commando", "The Amazing Spider Man", and "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers".
What the Police meant was that they wanted to ban the more extreme forms of Manga (seijen and gekiga), and I assume the equivalent Anime which is known as Hentai. They must learn to differentiate, both in their nomenclature, and identification, of the different generes.
By banning generic "Manga", they would actually ban a huge amount of perfectly legal childrens comics.
Unfortunatly, to cloud the matterm, the Japanese people as a whole have a completely different outlook on life. Because they still have shared baths, nudity in normal day-to-day life is perfectly acceptable, so is also acceptable in printed material. This extends to explicit underwear images (so called "Panty Shots"). But child nudity and underwear images, even in a naieve form is considered forbidden in this country. So even manga produced for young children *could* be considered as falling foul of some of the UK laws. And you could not just ban by title, as you may just get one such image every 4 issues.
I very much doubt that much of the Manga that gets into this country (as sold by Waterstones, Borders and Ottikas, as well as specialist comic shops) would even cause most of the population to bat an eyelid. But some might. The Clamp title Chobits, aimed at 15+ tenage girls, but read by many, actually has a few images of a physical act, performed by a young man on a robot that has the appearence of a teanage girl, that may by some be considered as abuse. Is the fact that the character is a robot enough to escape the law? I don't know, and I doubt that the Police will either.
And what about when a character that is supposed to be a post high school girl (18+), but is drawn to appear much younger is shown in a state of undress. This is again common in Manga, and probably would not cause any distress to the population as a whole, but is questionable.
The eminent UK comic strip writer Alan Moore (League of Extraodinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, and Constantine to name but a few) has actually left the country, because the legislation would seriously effect some of his work (a illustrated book called "Lost Girls" explores the childhood exploits of several female characters from other authors is likely to be banned from both sale and ownership under this legislation). And I'm sure that the British Library (which has a copy of every book published in the UK with an ISBN number) should be prosecuted as well.
These laws are obnoxious, and ill thought out. Much like a lot of the legislation that the current administration put together. We are heading for a situation like in the 60's when there was not enough guidance to police the Obscene Publications act consistantly. If I did not know any better, I would suspect that this administration are trying to enact laws that will allow *anybody* to be arrested, and once arrested held for up to 42 days while they have their homes searched.
And while I am about it, people better check their photo albums and boxes for any pictures of their own children in a state of undress (or dare I say it - nudity) as these are probably illegal as well. And what about the cover of the Yes album "Yesterdays".
Surely many of the young women photographed were acknowledgedly 17? What about the archives, the proofs, the negatives? What about all the drive-by web popups with girls 16 and over? Those get cached, or? What about the servers of faceparty.com? What about just plain porn? This is going to stress out a lot of conscientious people. It's as though Andrea Dworkin and Mary Whitehouse rose from the grave and took over parliament.
"Could the Criminal Law Justice Unit please explain a 100% foolproof method of completely deleting and/or destroying digital data to us? "
How about telling us how to reliably find it in the first place.
Perhaps they should make available, as a free download, the entire forensic toolset as used by the enforcement agencies, complete with full instructions, such that we can see "what they will see" if they search our HDDs. If you hit delete on a picture a couple of years ago - you can't get it back but I'll bet they can!
.......the likes of a quality family sport like boxing? Two semi naked men being paid to be brutalised and beat the hell out of each other, like hard as nails manwhores, with the extremely high likelyhood of bodily damage and in some cases even death.
You can argue all you like that it's not porn, however, if someone were to have that on TV, be naked him/herself and 'entertaining pam & her 5 lovely daughters' or 'tickling the trouts gills', then how exactly does that differentiate itself from extreme porn? You've even got to subscribe to PPV's for the high level *ahem* manwhores, I've heard rumours** there are porn websites where you have to subscribe for PPV's too......
**.....can't confirm this rumour, I've never paid for my porn with probably the exception of this internet connection, but I'm sure someone out there actually pays.
Paris, because I wouldn't half..........
> An image deemed to be obscene is of you and your partner for example?
> Could they arrest you for having pictures of yourself???
Paragraph 66 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act says:
* * * * *
[...]
(2) It is a defence for D [the Defendant] to prove—
(a) that D directly participated in the act or any of the acts portrayed, and
(b) that the act or acts did not involve the infliction of any non-consensual
harm on any person, and
(c) if the image portrays an act within section 63(7)(c), that what is
portrayed as a human corpse was not in fact a corpse.
* * * * *
Of course there's the small technical details that 1) this defence will only be available *after* you have been arrested and charged and 2) it rather ignores that little thing called "presumed innocent unless proven guilty" because it requires you to *prove* that you are innocent.
There's also the matter that you have to have been a "direct participant", so if a photographer takes a picture of two people engaged in a legal act, but one that could fall under this law, the participants would legally be permitted to own a copy of the image, but if the photographer keeps a copy, they would be breaking the law...!
BTW The Ministry of Justice have said that they will be producing some "non-statutory guidance" regarding this law, however there's no sign of it actually appearing and any enquiries to them simply get a response which has been cut-and-pasted together from various stock replies with some vague and non-specific (ie useless) suggestions of what might be covered.
PS Here's a good example of how stupid this law is. It makes illegal "extracts from [BBFC] classified works" if "it is of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been extracted (whether with or without other images) solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal" but that does *not* include the entirity of those films.
The BBFC recently gave an R18 classification to a film called "Girls with Guns" which features men being "forced" to engage in sex at gunpoint.
Clearly that "threatens someone's life" and it's "for sexual arousal", but because it is not an "extract from a classified work" it would still be entirely *legal*!!
(Headdesk)
I recently had the misfortune to be busted having a joint with a mate on a sunny evening in the park after a hard day at work.
We were both in suits, which is why i think we got a caution and didn't get frisked (once i'd handed over the little bit of weed i had).
Asking the policeman what law i was being prosecuted under i.e. class C or class B, he was unable to tell me. His answer was "the current one".
Further pressed on the matter with the question "So what happens if they change it again, would this caution not have happened.. would i be straight down the nick", he said he didn't know.
We all know politicians are dim, but by criminalising people for the most minor offence, how many of your 40% tax payers are you going to prevent from paying that ? I know my thoughts now are on getting out of this oppressive regime, i plan to go somewhere with more basic liberty, like perhaps China or Iran or Tibet.
Its your gravy train!!!
Even if the law was black and white, any law that criminalises images of acts between consenting adults - including staged acts - is draconian. But the fact that no one can be exactly sure what is or isn't illegal places an unfair burden on individuals. It will lead to a chilling effect where people fear visiting adult sites, or taking private images of their own acts, not knowing if such things are legal or not.
For reference, the Police responses (including those of West Midlands Police) to the Government consultation are at:
http://www.seenoevil.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Police
They seem convinced that these images exist involving torture of non-consenting victims - they even mention "snuff films" - yet the resultant law will criminalise staged and consensual images, and it will even cover clips from legal films!
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To add to Graham Marsden's comment about the Defence for people who directly participated in the scene, note that the law makes it clear that this only applies to acts that adults can consent to in law. This is presumably a blatant reference to the Spanner case, where consenting adults were charged with assault on their own bodies for engaging in sadomaschism. In other words, this defence will be useless for any BDSMers out there who are inflicting harm that is more than "transient and trifling" (though it will at least help for say, a staged image such as knifeplay or pretend breathplay).
Also imagine a threesome - where one night, two partners of the threesome engage in some homemade "extreme porn" making of their own, producing private images that are entirely legal for them to own, but illegal if they then allow their third partner to see it.
There were far more reasonable defences proposed, that still would have allowed the Government achieve its stated aims (e.g., Liberty proposed a defence for those who reasonably believed that no one was made to act against their will), but they were rejected out of hand.
First, a law that flies in the face of basic legal principles, namely, people must be able to tell if what they are doing is, or is not, legal. A vague, ambiguous law like the one under discussion violates this principle.
IANAL but a valid defense might be "well, I read the law, looked at my porn, and concluded I was within the law by any reasonable standard. If I'm wrong, it's because the law is seriously unclear."
Or perhaps a learned judge will issue a precedent-setting decision that the law is so vague as to be unenforceable, ergo a dead letter.
Second, the motivation is the usual NuLabour fuzzy-brained version of political correctness, where nothing can ever offend anyone: vide the lady who was told to take her pottery pig collection out of her front window "because it might offend moslems wandering by."
Don't these fools realize that the essence of a free society is that you, me, her, him, our Divine Moderatrix, and even Jacqui Smith are guaranteed to be offended, often and with gusto?
Once again, all I can do is shake my head. How did these people ever get voted in?
Penguins don't care about porn...
Acutally, if they are handing out examples showing the good and the "better", then I may just have to get a set. On the other hand, maybe plod will set up a web site where you can download the appropriate image samples.
It may be easier to tell if your images are ok or not by printing off a set and mailing whole thing to #10 and to Jacqui and then calling the coppers to see if they're legal or not, eh?
Paris, 'cause no animals were harmed in the filming of her movies.
....and I loved her so.
So we got married.
As we demonstrated our mutual love and affection in a very physical manner in the honeymoon suite I looked into the tastefully ceiling mounted mirror and thought "Cool - I'll just snap a Polaroid for the family album".
Now I'm banged up for child pornography!
"Similar circumstances arose when the age of the child – in respect of possession of indecent photographs of children – was raised from under 16 to under 18 in the Sexual Offences Act 2003."
I am assuming that a picture of two naked humping bodies would generally be considered "indecent".
I can also see that private acts between consenting adults which are completely legal could constitute pornography if published in still or moving pictures.
What I cannot see is that it can be legal to have sex and marry (not necessarily in that order) at the age of sixteen but that pictures still fall under CHILD pornography.
Does not compute!!! [IT angle].
Paris because she still looks barely more than a child.
What if I have n00d snaps of my 17 year old girlfriend? (I am 19) Am I a dirty irredeemable sex offender?
This law is ridiculous and will create many problems and solve none. In fact, I expect it will lead to more rape because people who otherwise would sit at home looking at CP (disgusting as that is) are more likely to go out and offend to get a kick.
1) Emigrate
2) Make some extreme porn (or search wikimedia commons for some you can legally redistribute)
3) Host this somewhere where you have access to the logs
4) Rickroll lots
5) Hand over appropriate evidence
Vulture because it won't be long before you're arrested for looking at it
so your internet cache tolls the bells of your doom.
youre browsing some non-extreme porno just because you like the aesthetic... you wouldnt be touching yourself...
suddenly something extreme comes along... you know its illegal as soon as you see it, but you're already fucked!
the image is on your computer now and unless you can find that particular track and sector on your physical hard disk and DoD wipe it then smash your HDD and drill holes in it so it cant be recovered, youre in the nick in no time. or youre shipped out to australia like yours and my ancestors.
the end of the world is nigh.
I have not been to Japan! But there is plenty of documentary evidence on the Web of baths and hot springs (sento and onsen) where it is required that you not wear swim-suits or other clothes (start at Wikipedia, I believe that you can trust it for that), although it does seem like the custom is to have gender-seperation. I suggest you get away from the centre of the big cities, and start looking at their real culture.
My original statement was possibly mis-worded. Many Japanese people will not find it strange that people are depicted or seen in the nude in some public places. I agree that it is not the case in *all* public places. It is not the nudity, but the location that is the issue there. I believe that they would be less concerned about it in places like baths than your average member of the British public, who have been conditioned to believe that being seen in the nude by someone who was not an intimate friend was a mortal sin for both parties (I'm generalising, but I am trying to make a point). We really are a prudish lot.
<< If the new law really "criminalised nothing that was not already illegal" then why the f**k do we need to have a new law? Why not just ..... oh, I don't know ..... enforce the existing ones? >>
We need to have a new law because we've got a bunch if idiots sitting in Westminster taking home fat paycheques (usually on top of the several fat paycheques they get for being on numerous corporate boards). If they didn't keep churning out new, pointless laws banning this, that and the other, they wouldn't know how to occupy their time.
This reminds me of (i think) a judge in the US, who, when asked to define obscence pornography, said something along the lines of "i cant describe it, but i'll now it when i see it".
Cant help but think the same will apply here in the UK to extreme pornography, with individual judges having heir own slant on it.
For those worried about what the law thinks if they are caught snapping (photographically, of course) the private parts of their 17-year-old bride...have no fear. There are specific exemptions both in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the CJIA 2008.
In the former case, photographing a 16 or 17 year-old in flagrante makes u a paedophile, unless u are having a relationship with her (though can't remember whether any old realtionship will do or u have to be married).
In the case of extreme porn, photographing yourself and nearest and dearest in flagrante is fine, so long as the acts are themselves legal. So. Murder t'other half an w*nk over the photos and "you're nicked, my son".
Stage murder of t'other half an smother her in tomato sauce an "you're free to go".
Take photos of ditto - and its back to position one ("you're nicked").
Unless you participate: "well, officer. I had a hand in that photo. You just can't see it because.... well, allow me to explain fisting to you."
And of course, exactly the same scene, enacted by your friends will get you nicked.
Thus, the law now has specific exemptions for couples who psyche themselves up to acting out a fantasy, whilst not for those who merely buy photos of pre-packaged fantasy.
If the "slippery slope" argument has any validity (and in theory the government believes it has) this is just stupid...because it makes it ok to do something that is much closer to the real thing than something that is seriously distant.
So i take it the BBFC will be hiring when this law comes in? I mean, we can't have all those films out there with all this extreme stuff in them can we, and someone has to sit there and watch all those films to determine which are safe and which are to be blacklisted.... Hold on a second, have I been magically transported into Alan Moore's V for Vendetta comic, or is this really happening?
Paris, because she really isn't extreme,
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Pornography is a billion dollar industry and whilst there is someone willing to do almost anything for money and another willing to pay almost anything to see it, a fact of life.
The freedom to surf the internet is an empowering feeling, but this may be short lived for future generations. Illegal content will eventually lead to the demise of the freedom we experience in the Internet. People will need a digital licenses to be able to surf, which will be monitored constantly.
WHY? All because we can not moderate our behaviour.
The fact is that all laws need our respect no matter how much we disagree with them. These laws should be taught in schools from any early age, so that children grow into adults respecting the law.
Quoted in the article linked below, Inspector Shortland of HM's Finest says "bestiality, necrophilia, rape and torture would still be considered obscene," as would depictions of sexual gratification through lavatorial functions.
Just below the pic of a pile of "Lady Chatterley's Lover".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7439740.stm
Not my kink, but I know a couple who (for whatever reason) find that sort of thing enjoyable and who have never comitted a real crime in their life - now it would appear they are part of The Greatest Threat To Mankind in the world today.
And those nice senior-grade men and women in blue cannot figure out why the public has less and less respect for them...
Oh, and my sister-in-law was recently given a bollocking for daring to photograph her son in a public swimming pool.
Yesterday, 99.999% of the porn-viewing UK public did not rape, murder or kill anyone.
The Labour government was 100% responsible for the death of another four British soldiers in Afghanistan.
(No icon for this as nothing can come close to the disgust I am feeling towards our so-called Elected Representatives at this time)
So long as there is a critical mass of idiots who still get nicked for not using strong cryptography + steganography to protect their privacy, governments will be convinced that their stupid laws are actually working and they won't ban strong cryptography + steganography.
(And no, RIPA III didn't do just that)
Damn! After years of foisting the tubes on us, and all sorts porn (a major driver of technology over the last 150 years or so) being legal in various jurisdictions *outside* the UK. Surely it would have been obvious to at least *one* MP or Lord that the two would eventually collide? The only conclusion is that Mrs Whitehouse (hee hee!) was right all along. Switch it off! These damned interwebtubes. How do we stop em? Users could be prosecuted and put on the sex offender register by simply clicking on a link just of curiosity.
They'd better ban access to chat sites such as Yahoo, MSN, etc etc. Still, if Mr Burnham gets his way, you might be able to go on these things after 9pm. Sorted. Aren't politicos brilliant? Mine wants a pay rise.
In one of his books there is a ferocious forrest fire that burns for 4 hours then puts itself out as mandated by law. In our world the law is not that powerful, it's only words.
Without going into amazing detail about how stupid this law is, it obviously is, we should learn the basic moral:
That the government want to make us all criminals with no defence. So they can get us for what ever they like if we cross them in any way.
Pretty much all new ledgeslation comes down to that. I understand that I live as a criminal under sufferance because I am getting away with it. I am guilty until proven innocent because I really am guilty. But I am also innocent until caught, which how most of us are able to live our lives.
For me those seem to be the FACTS. Question is, what do we do about it? I have downloaded the Terror Manual just so I can be sure of being guilty. I expect some of my porn is dodgy too. Perhaps we all ought to do something that is both harmless and totally illegal as a protest. Then we should demand to be arrested for it.
To have selectively enforced laws is a police state.
Just define porn as any picture of anyone under the age of 18 (or even if they look 18 or less) and have no clothes on as extreme porn. All nudists photos are extreme porn. You can be naked just do not take any pictures. :-)
Any pictures of your kids in the tub ----- extreme porn.
Any sonograms of your pre-born kids ----- extreme porn.
See, its easy. :-(
PS, all politicians = terrorists. Just a different kind of terror.
Note: thinking about nude people ---- almost extreme porn.
... a... err... friend saw... a vid a while back of a female police officer involved in various lurid acts. Upon enquiring, some people find the uniform arousing- and given the whole "police brutality" (and it certainly was in this movie.... gah.. alledgedly) that'd class as "extreme porn" in my book
So the police now are NOT allowed to appear on camera or on TV.
I think I understand.
With a subjective law I can't be sure that I can be innocent, but I can definitely make sure that I am guilty - removing the worry of uncertainty while playing with the boundaries of my comfort zone and...
[connects to some nearby wifi]
[Searches for Hentai]
<sings>
Turning Japanese,
I think I'm turning Japanese,
I really think so...
</sings>
Wow, look at that - gotta go.
> WHY? All because we can not moderate our behaviour.
No, all because we have a puritanical bunch of leaders who think that *we* shouldn't look at anything that *they* don't like and a spineless "Opposition" who don't want to upset Middle England, so will pander to their prejudices instead of voting against a ludicrous Thought Crime law which says "if people don't see this stuff, they won't do nasty things".
I have *no* respect for a law like that.
"... before knee-jerk laws are allowed to disrupt everyone's lives!"
There is, it's called the daily turnover of the Daily Mail/Sun/[insert other reactionary trash press here].
Policy by tabloid - it's been the way forward for the last twenty years.
Steven R
I have read your response twice, in the hope of catching the irony, but I can't see it. You may therefore be a troll, in which case I'll regret responding. But, just in case you are serious, then I have to call you a moron! You are basically saying that a legitimate government can never make a bad law, and that any law must be obeyed. To use an old jurisprudence example, your argument says that if the government passed a law saying that all people with blue eyes must be killed, that law must be followed. Do you begin to see the folly of your contention? It is entirely possible for a law to be legitimately passed that it would be absolutely morally wrong to obey - this porn legislation is an example, as it crosses the correct boundaries between state and individual behaviour.
Now, go away and play somewhere else.
I take a piccy of me nailing my willy to a plank with a rusty nail? Possibly legal for me to own, but definitely illegal for you to own right? But... then you produce #2 of the photoset (taken by me from a different angle using a remote release) which makes it obvious that the nail was actually only passing harmlessly through a healed-up, pre-existing hole from last time. (Can you imagine wanting to do it once. let alone twice?!) Is the situation then that you can legally own the 1st piccy only if you are in possession of the 2nd?
Sad icon because 'they're coming to take me away, haha...'
"(a) an act which threatens a person’s life
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
(c) an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse, or
(d) 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 any such person or animal was real."
Does this mean that, regardless of extremity, any animated or CGI videos/pictures are entirely legal? Even regardless of how life-like they are, as long as they come with a little scrolling subtitle saying "this is animated". What a daft law.
I never even knew this law was coming, it's pretty sad that the mother of democracy is turning into a "Thought police state". I thought that's why we are in Afghanistan, just to fight against this sort of state terror.
When will this creep thought terror stop ? Will the government want to put view finders in all our homes, like in 1984 ? Brave New world is another class book everyone should read. These books were written along time ago, just to highlight the future possible tyranny that could exist in the future. I think they are getting more bold these days, the simple one was the sex offenders list, everyone hates the paedos and pervs, so who will defend them ? no one. Law passes fine, then the draconian RIP which should instil fear into all U.K citizens. The thing is that it just won't be the police in the future, it will be agencies, the government will make sure that they are not accountable by using private firms.
Truth be told, the police hate the fact that hard-core is now legal, if it was left to up to the UK government / Parliament it would still be, there is one hope for us all, Europe ! (They ruled that hard-core is legal under the HR Act). They are 30 years ahead of our "out of control values, needs government laws to save us" ideology.
quote/ I do however, have a question. If you're filming yourself having sex with your girlfriend, and she dies during the act, are you then guilty of possession of images of necrophilia./quote
Whose to say she was not just asleep on the job as women seem to give the impression that they find sex so boring.
Pics of *fake* underage and "extreme" situations are illegal only if owned for the purpose of sexual arousement. Why not tell that you own the images for artistic or documentation reason, and *prosecute the bloody prosecution* for illegally being aroused by this kind of material? Should work if the judiciary is about logics and not flashmobs. I won't be the one doing the testing though.
David Roberts: interestingly, there's an exception to the child porn laws in this country for sexually explicit photos of your legally-married partner and of you and your partner together. Apparently, sanity prevailed on that one. Doubt it applies if you show the photos to third parties or distrbute them, of course.
Well, the obvious solution to the dilemma of having to decide whether your pr0n is extreme or tame is to have the govt set up a searchable website with all existing pr0n available and categorized appropriately.
Example: you grab a new bondage pic from somewhere, and are not sure if it's too extreme. Head over to extremeporn.gov.uk, browse the bondage photos, and find one just like yours. Have a look at the extreme/tame rating, and problem solved.
In the rare case where you can't find anything like what you've got your hand on (not hands: the other is likely to be occupied), just upload it to the govt server and wait for it to get rated.
Yeah - but we're not in the Free world, we're in the United Kingdom...
@What if...
Interestingly if you owned the second picture you could get done under this law. Becouse the police can take into consideration the whole set (even if you don't have a copy of it) namely the picture where physical harm seemed to have been commited.
Sorry to be pedantic here, just need to clarify a couple of matters. If a Government/Law were to ban Manga Images they'd very quickly find themselves in court, an Manga is a tradename (such is Kleenex) and there is a company trading as such (I beleive the name translates as 'Irresponsible Pictures').
They would have to attempt to ban 'Anime' as this is the correct term for this artform. This would only p**s off a number of people whose comic and Video collections would still otherwise be perfectly legal, not to mention the artists.
If they wanted to get it right, then they would need to look at banning the more extreme versions of 'Hentai' as this is the <ahem> adult version of Anime. Some Hentai work is quite artistic, although a lot is quite nasty, so banning all Hentai wouldn't work either.
Seems like yet another ill advised and badly thought out move from the Government.
(AC since I don't fancy G.B. phoning me up and asking what all this means)
PH since it looks like all of her offerings will still be legal (unless there's some I haven't seen yet)
@@Child Images & Manga. - Yes Manga is a trading company but it is also the traditional name for local comic books in Japan.
On that note
I'd refer people to my previous brief definitions of adult manga/hentai it is a wide and inclusive area spanning male/male (yaoi)
girl/girl (yuri),
male/female (ero),
pervy fun (ecchi),
delicious flat chest (somewhere between ero/yuri and loli),
Moe (ultra cute dresses and feelings of love, flat chest is commons, but no pronz), Moe Pronz (Moe with pronz),
Lolicon (goes from flat chest teens too babies although most of your "mainstream" stuff is 9 to 13 kind of effeminet but not quite - think twiggy lol - also not always pronz - Nanoha/Shana/Louise can all be dumped in the loli catagory but they're more Moe then loli),
Shouta (loli with boys),
shounen/shoujo ai,
Hentai (girl/monster/aliens),
goru (errr people being perferated by massive shlongs, chainsaws, decaptiation, people being turned into bags of goo whilst being mongled),
milk udders(birds with boobs the size of CRT monitors),
errr futa (d!ck girls),
S&M, Torture.
You can have combinations, alot of the stuff is based on other legit shows but theres origonal content in there too.
Goes from art house to pure fap bate.
And that's just the manga pron genres I can think of. Then theres the non porn, and the stuff that if you took it out of context could be porn.
I remember Chobits being mentioned earlier (strong Moe anime) the main female is an android who has only just reawoken, and as such has a new born personality, so technically would be like 6 months at the end of the manga. Although that one is alot about love beyond the purely physical, becouse unlike many androids Chi (the main girl) has her reset switch where one would place your member if you wanted to get it on with her.
You have a Manga like Battle Royale, where one of the main girls was abused as a child and is increadibly promiscuous (but also a sociapath) that manga has alot of violence and sex. Teens with only 3 days to live with a mission to be the last boy/girl standing... Interesting story.
Theres a manga I'm reading at the moment about a boy(15) who is a cross dresser being caught in a love triangle between his child hood best friend (13) and a girl(15) in his class. An interesting story with compelling characters and interesting interplay as the boy alternates from performing in his girl and boy personas.
That's three manga that I'm sure could fall foul of any extension of indecent image law to cover drawings.
It's a bad law. Pure and simple. I hope you've enjoyed the pronz round up.
It is infact even worse then the extreme porn law, which is the worse law about at the moment.
I wrote to a few lords regarding the new law and received a letter this morning from Lord Janvrin.
"Thank you very much for your letter of 28 April regarding the pornography clauses in the Criminal Justice & Immigration Bill. There was confusion over the definition of extreme pornography and the government amended to accommodate consensual behaviour was welcomed in the House.
I was grateful to receive your views.
Yours Sincerely,
Lord Janvrin"
Surely this means things have changed?
"Surely this means things have changed?"
Sadly not - the amendment made was very narrow. The defence for consensual acts only applies for those who "directly participated in the act". So a pic of yourself might be legal for you to possess, but as soon as you pass it to somneone else (even say privately to your girlfriend), it's illegal for them to possess. It's not even clear if the photographer can possess the photo, since they did not "directly participate in the act"!
Also the defence only applies to images the Government thinks we're allowed to consent to - and since acts which result in harm more than "transient or trifling" are still illegal to consent to (see Operation Spanner), the defence won't apply to these, so it is useless for actual acts between consenting adults.
So whilst the defence may help some people, it will still be illegal to possess images of consenting adults (including screenshots from legal films, which are obviously known to be consensual), and in some cases, it will still be illegal to posses images of yourself in these acts.
See http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2008/ukpga_20080004_en_9#pt5-pb1-l1g66 for the actual wording.