Man remanded for extreme porn offences An arrest – and remand time – for being suspected of possessing extreme porn may act as wake-up call for those who thought that the new law on extreme porn would just quietly fade away. Nathan Porter, of Jones Street, Pendleton, has been charged with seven counts of possession of extreme pornographic images and appeared for a …
... possessing 7 DVDs of weird porno is a serious offense?
In cases where it could be considered it animal cruelty yes it should be a crime. But if a woman wants to "get freaky" with animals and no one is physically hurt - who cares?
No one is forcing you to join in. No one is forcing you to buy the DVD.
It's the sort of thing people (ok, my uni housemates and me) used to leave on each others screens to take the piss. Rather worrying that it now carries a custodial sentence all by itself. It's also worrying that police computer forensics people who are busy enough are being diverted to work on "lightweight" cases such as this.
Tux, well just use your imagination - I'm afraid of breaking wacky jacqui's law.
"In cases where it could be considered it animal cruelty yes it should be a crime."
What do you mean by "it"? (I mean the first "it" or the third "it". I'm going to tactfully ignore the second "it".) You sound like one of those depressingly numerous people who can't tell the difference between an activity and a picture of an activity.
A law against cruelty to animals - ACCEPTABLE
A law against possessing images of cruelty to animals - TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE
I would imagine that the case against bestiality porn is that animals, like children, are considered unable to give consent, thus the DVDs feature depictions of real unconsensual sex.
Whether this makes sense or not is another matter, I would imagine you'd need to talk to a collection of biologists and animal psychologists to determine whether such material requires behaviour that is innately abusive towards either the performers or the animals involved. But this is the UK government, it shouldn't be any surprise by now that the decisions being made on any given subject within the law don't require those making decisions to have the faintest idea of what they're talking about...
An ex-colleague of mine from years ago was prosecuted for creating child porn. I'd known him for years and was horrified to discover someone I'd thought was OK had been doing that kind of thing.
He'd gone from a healthy interest in porn, to an unhealthy interest in porn (I spent some time deleting his collection from the HD of a communal PC - it's difficult to do that without seeing some of it), to child porn. And up until then, I'd have agreed with A/C #1, that looking at porn was your own business - I didn't like it, but it was nothing to do with me, etc. etc. ...
My knowledge of him makes me think that where porn's concerned, there can be a kind of escalation - you're happy with one sort, then one day that's not exciting enough, so you look for something racier, and so on... until you end up like this guy or my ex-colleague.
As for being prosecuted for owning it - why not? You're hardly going to own something you never use or look at, are you?
I'm sorry - but that's absolute horsepoo.
Show me one (unbiased) recent statistic that shows women are traffiked into porn.
If you actually left the house once in a while and visited foreign lands, such as Paris, you'd find that beast porn is not just available, but oddly popular. These are professional, taxed and accredited DVDs of which all performers are consensual, not dirty back-alley jobs.
"Apart from many are traffiked women forced to do these acts....",
i.e. there is no justification and you had to imagine an *extra* crime to try to justify it? I'm right aren't I?
If the 'crime' of possessing besty porn was justified then you wouldn't have to imagine some extra add on parts to justify it in your head!
1) Man arrested for buying Nike's
2) Why is this a crime when nobody is hurt?
3) ... apart from the small children beaten in the Nike factories as they appear in my imagination! What are you going to do about that, those kids are dying in my imagination, their blood stained tears, from their 22 hour days in the factory floor..... in my imagination.... is shocking!
You could bang a goat and only get done for animal cruelty.
@@A/C 4th September 2009 12:49 GMT
that old chestnut, where prey tell is the evidence to support it other then wild scaremongering from anonymous cowards? Facts please facts, not the same kind of drivel the police and home office make up to get their fascism through.
"Apart from many are traffiked women forced to do these acts...."
Got any stats to back that up AC? The last I heard is that there is no reliable info on sex trafficking in general, and the current figures are most probably grossly overestimated.
Anyway, who's to say that a lot of girls featuring in "normal" porn haven't also been coerced against their will to take part? Are you suggesting we should we put a ban on all forms of internet porn?
The police don't really care about this law - as noted in the article it's just tacked on to other convictions to ramp up the number of crimes solved.
The line "opposition to bail in this case was the latter: investigations are still ongoing for other serious matters." is the real issue here - they've used this law to detain him when they otherwise wouldn't have the proof to arrest him yet.
They may be justified in what they're doing, it may be for the public good, but I'm not sure it's right and proper and it certainly doesn't indicate they take the law any more seriously than they should.
Have you got anything to support this? Not that I'm sticking up (ahem) for this kind of stuff, but the spectre of 'trafficked women' keeps getting raised with nothing to back it up. (Or if there is something to back it up, it doesn't bear sensible scrutiny - see the 'Big Brothel' report, for example.)
Of course, if it's not harming trafficked women, then it's funding terrorists.
Hoooo boy, that's my afternoon taken care of, then.
Could I just ask a) if you imagine this kind of escalation occurs with the majority of people who look at porn, and b) what possible harm owning or ooking at a picture of something does that necessitates the prosecution of the viewer?
Also, define 'unhealthy interest', if you would.
Any rational person should be able to see that this law is an immoral farce. Oh, and if the government actually cared about animal welfare they would sort out DEFRA, the Dangerous Dogs Act and any number of other badnesses which cause actual quantifiable suffering. It's wall-to-wall bullshit.
It doesn't surprise me that Plod are keen to start putting this law into practice (despite making noises about not being too fussed about it when it was first announced). As usual, they're just using yet another law designed to criminalise a whole new demographic to spruce up their PRP targets. These arrests are nothing more to them than a few more brownie points - without any thought for the otherwise law-abiding lives they behind, ruined.
Of course, by making the association of CP with 'extreme porn' Plod are also up to their old tricks of grooming the public consciousness to equate certain types of consensual adult sexual behaviour as not just 'peverse', but outright dangerous to kids. Nice going, Inspector Knacker!
How long before having an 'un-natural' foot fetish becomes symptomatic with an interest in prepubescents? Just leave it to the wonderful 'Boys in Blue' - they'll guarantee to stitch you up in ways you haven't even imagined possible.
"b) what possible harm owning or ooking* at a picture of something"
*is that something the librarian would do? nice pun** if it was intended.
**I don't know whether it's a pun or not, but I found it funny and pun is a convenient label.
Bootnote: Obscene Pedantry is next on the list, you mark my words.
PS I tried on some thigh high leather boots the other week and found that I could actually walk in high heels....go figure.
<- This is me putting on my peril sensitive sunglasses.
I might have disagreed with you, but then I thought of my own experiences.
I saw something that excited me. It was new, it was different, it intrigued me and I enjoyed it.
But then I didn't want the same again, I wanted more, I wanted better, I wanted harder, I wanted more excitement!
So I...
... just went back to the library and got another book out.
(I would have put a FAIL icon on this, but that might have given it away)
How did you know that your colleague didn't have these interests before? How do you know it was a "progression"? How do you know it was "caused" by the porn?
You seem to be saying that, just like the idiots who proposed and passed this law, *everyone* cannot be trusted not to go out and commit murder or shag animals or abuse children just because they look at this stuff.
And if you want some evidence of how wrong you are, I suggest you look at the work of Professor Milton Diamond PhD of the University of Hawai'i who studied the effects of the availability of porn (including "extreme" porn) in the USA and Japan and concluded:
"It is certainly clear from the data reviewed, and the new data and analysis presented, that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan, the United States and elsewhere has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes"
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/pornography/prngrphy_ovrvw.html
Yep, laws used to exist to protect victims and provide a means for people that did bad things to be punished.
Pretty much every "bad thing" that can be done has a law that says you can't do it, there's nothing left to make laws for - all actions you can carry out are covered. What are the law makers and lobby organisations to do with themselves.
They could of course generate additional laws such as the recent ban on smacking where extensive (and sufficient) anti-child abuse law already exists, but why bother doing that when they can move into completely new territories where no legislation or laws exist.
There is a new trend happening not just in the UK but worldwide and trend is that intent = crime and even possible intent = crime.
What we are seeing is the emergence of (cliché or not) thought police. You can expect a whole raft of new thought crimes to be brought into existence mostly under the banner of anti-terrorism law.
The law has gone like this...
You carried out a terrorist act = Crime
You are going to carry out a terrorist act = Crime
You are thinking about carrying out a terrorist act = Crime - This is where we currently are.
And soon
Are you thinking of carrying out a terrorist act? = Crime
Maybe with terrorism it's not such a bad thing, but the logic will soon creep to all aspects of the law from paying your car tax to thinking about watching porn.
It's fucking scary shit and be aware, it's happening worldwide.
The little shit who organised a gang of kids to burgle my house and five other houses in the area (whilst on probation for similar offences) only received 160 hours community service and had to pay me 100 quid compensation. He took a year to pay the 100 quid and I never received any of my stuff back.
How therefore, can anyone get a custodial sentence (even a suspended one) for looking at pictures, no matter how disgusting?
If that is indeed the case then it's a more complex problem.
Should we then be considering possession of a picture of an act, not taken be you, and without knowledge of the circumstances in which the woman came into this... job, enough to make you complicit in the possible trafficking and abuse of the woman and cruelty to the animal?
The obvious comparison here is that of child pornography, where someone might try to make the same argument. The difference has to be though that child pornography only seems to be obtainable through secretive on-line* groups, who plan to carry out acts of abuse and share the resulting stash around their community. Bestiality on the other hand, I imagine can be found quite easily, from counties where it isn't illegal, or they don't enforce it.
*I think it's fair to say the web has a lot to answer for. Despite what Daily Hate readers say, I can't believe there are actually more of these sickos around than before. They just seem to be more coordinated now.
"My knowledge of him makes me think that where porn's concerned, there can be a kind of escalation - you're happy with one sort, then one day that's not exciting enough, so you look for something racier, and so on..."
So, if that happens with porn, presumably it would happen with sex, too, right? You start out perfectly happy with your wife... then it's having affairs, then it's the baby sitter; before you know it you're a pedophile!
By your logic, sex should be banned as a gateway to pedophilia. It doesn't make any sense there, and it doesn't make any sense with porn, either.
whilst the argument holds water on what individuals should and should not do in the privacy of their own home.
The issue is in the supply chain.
I'm sure that no-one can give me a reasoned argument that says it is right and proper to induce or even force children (or animals) into acts that have no basis in biology other than for self gratification or as is more often the case a purely financial operation aimed at vulnerable people.
If the animals don't like it they'll kick and bite where it hurts >)
But seriously animal abuse (harm/cruelty) is one thing, jacking off a horse is another. Where the line is drawn should be up to the RSPCA or other private prosecutors. The police have better things to do and have enough toys (read; laws) to abuse.
@escalation boy; I've been looking at porn since before I was a teenager in one way or another, I'm now well beyond the age of consent (too many grey hairs (*sniffle*) and I've yet to get jiggy with dog, horse, goat or child. wtb a clue?
The secret to writing a good comment is quote facts and source!!! [citation needed] - it's one of the many good things wikipedia has done for us.
Sarah, THANK YOU. It is indeed wall to wall BS, I've just had a friend 'investigated' by the RSPCA for keeping her animals in conditions they like (no that's not how they phrased it). The same RSPCA currently being dragged over the tiles for various acts that are far worse than what she *didn't* do.
Laws like this are used by the British equivalent of the 'US Moral Majority' to force their narrow minded opinions on the rest of the population.
The sooner this bunch of loonies loses the election the better.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Any rational person should be able to see that this law is an immoral farce. Oh, and if the government actually cared about animal welfare they would sort out DEFRA , the Dangerous Dogs Act and any number of other badnesses which cause actual quantifiable suffering. It's wall-to-wall bullshit."
I think you might be stretching the bounds of impartuialty there and if I may say so you sound tense my sugestion is you find an ipod and take it to the pub and see how well you can do the job from there :)
Can someone please explain why looking at a picture of a criminal act is morally equivalent to committing it or necessarily even endorses the pictured act?
In other cases society actively encourages the viewing of widely offensive images as education - e.g. battlefield images, Nazi Holocaust, Rwanda massacre etc, the News At Ten whatever!
"But no right minded person would get their rocks off to that."
1. Yes but isn't that true of deviant pr0n too? However often your "right minded" person sees it they're not going to start liking it.
2. What gives anyone either the right or the insight to impugn another person's thoughts? It might be 'research' - you can't bloody tell and it doesn't bloody matter! Acts are different - if they are caught muffin the mule then (maybe) throw the book at them. Meanwhile our moral guardians can go wash their own brains out with soap!
3).....those kids are dying in my imagination, their blood stained tears, from their 22 hour days in the factory floor..... in my imagination.... is shocking!
You can probably get arrested now for imagining cruelty to children
Best you stop soon lest you start funding terrorists somehow!!!
"Individuals may be remanded in custody on a number of grounds – usually where there is fear of them absconding, or where they might interfere with an ongoing investigation"
Where "an ongoing investigation" should read:
a) themselves
b) a goat
c) ...
I'll allow you to fill in some more amusing blanks
I find it odd that for an IT website with such a professional readership, 'news' items like this and others involving porn or which have comic value have more comments than say the latest development in cloud computing or storage devices. Seems to me that people want a career in IT to allow them to bypass all the security and download porn all day - makes the day pass quicker I guess. Articles like this just show the readership which porn they now have to delete to stay just inside the law...
Handgrenade, social, for the use of. Pull pin, stand well back.
I blame the Daily Mail. And everybody else other than me. Time to start a political party for civil liberties? That, you know, actually understands technology? Though we'd never get elected, since the admission that there can be no absolute safety net against crime isn't sufficiently populist.
Also, I think they're really much better known as "either way" offences, since they usually go only one of either way (the rare exception being when Magistrates have heard the entire case but in so doing discover that their limited sentencing powers are insufficient and pass the case up to the Crown for sentencing).
Trafficking is a crime on itself and trying to approach it indirectly by hunting porn viewers is stupid and counter-productive.
However I can tell you for sure that the trafficking issue is much bigger than you imagine. Some years ago, my wife worked in the Police in an eastern European country, in the department dealing with the fight against human trafficking.
From the victims who managed to escape they got glimpses of a huge underground world. Yes, it's hard to set numbers - it's not like they are running censuses, aren't they? But each escaping victim would tell how many others have left behind, or through how many locations they were moved.
My wife told me some of the stories they encountered and they were really horrific.
Why are so few victims escaping? There are many ways for their captors to hold them captive. For example, they threaten to torture and kill their families back home if they try to escape. Some of them develop very strong cases of the Stockholm syndrome. And even when they escape, they are stigmated for life and it's hard to reintegrate into the society. And later, like with any case of extreme abuse, many victims become traffickers themselves.
To make matter worse, traffickers often have corrupt cops in their back pockets, sometimes even working themselves at "recruiting" the girls. And it's not only the East-European cops who are corrupt. Brothels using trafficked women in Western Europe often operated with the help of the police as well - in many cases avid "consumers" themselves.
To those who think that this is not an important matter, I tell you this: just because you don't know much about the problem of human trafficking, it doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.
Modern-day slavery is still very much present in the Western world. And the sex industry is just one of the areas where you can find it.
I couldn't agree more, but what I'd like to understand is why this is attitude so internationally prevalent? Is it the military-industrial complex or whatever it's called? Incidentally, I thought this was happening mainly in developed countries with western-style culture - am I wrong?
@Sarah - +1 your comment.
The more you push some activities underground, the more you will get criminal elements involved.
I'm prepared to believe some ladies prefer a pooch to a boyfriend - after all, rover doesn't want a beer afterward, and doesn't care if you watch Grey's anatomy instead of the game. And there are certainly mutts like a dog my neighbours once had that would shag anything from a table leg upwards. So no coercion there.
However, if the participants selling DVDs of their activities could do so without fear of prosecution, it would be easier to check who they were, and ensure that all concerned were indeed enthusiastic volunteers. (Society might also gain by collecting some taxes on the DVD sales).
By criminalizing the activity you force those indulging in it to become anonymous, and it therefore becomes harder to protect the vulnerable. In short, if traficked women are forced into these activities, it is partly because of, not despite extreme porn laws.
"Modern-day slavery is still very much present in the Western world. And the sex industry is just one of the areas where you can find it."
Yes, just *one*. So using claims that "trafficked women are forced to do these acts" as an excuse for saying "we must make pictures of these acts illegal" is nonsense.
ahh see what you did there? when asked for credible statistics, rather then provide them, you provided a bunch of 3rd level hersay. "some random person on the internet posting anonymously (you), said his wife was told about" really isn't a solid retorical position.
As a matter of fact, you managed to write 8 paragraphs, without ONE verifiable fact. You might have a good future in politics!
seriously, if you want to help your case, you need to research it, and provide credible evidance to affirm your argument.
Oi! I hope you can back up the assertion that the police (as an entity) assists human trafficking, infact being able to back up that any number of corrupt officers are involved would be a good start.
I'm about to start ripping into this affair, but the assertion that every, or even more than a few police officers are utter scumbags gets on my nerves. One of my mates once punched a man for raping his girlfriend, a probationer tried to arrest him(mate) while his GF was being examined, the sergeant promptly told said probationer to get stuffed. There you have an example of a bad,officious,prick of a cop, and an example of one with at least half a working brain.
Back to the case in hand. I don't like the idea of the contents of computers being used as an excuse to detain people who can't be charged on other grounds. Conceivably someone could even end up in custody until a court then decided that the image wasn't actually extreme porn after all.
To those who say that there's a difference between committing an act and having an image of it. Would you really get off on watching video of a gang-rape, knowing that someone's life was ruined to make that video, for your amusement? Think carefully.
Death of the Reg Icon because we haven't heard anything from Simon T for too long. There's nothing wrong with descriptions of violence towards lusers, they ain't human in the first place.
@Sarah Bee and the others making some interesting arguments... leads me to this
Posession of a nuke shouldn't be a crime. Merely posessing it doesn't hurt anyone. Same thing for shooting towards you, as long as I don't actually wound you. " Attempted murder. Now, honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? "
Also, I like how " there can be a kind of escalation " has turned into "EVERYONE WHO EVER THINKS ABOUT ANYTHING BECOMES COMPLETELY OBSESSED WITH IT" You guys really need to escalate his/her comment to bash them over it.
"unhealthy interest" would probably be the point where they guy started obsessing over it to the point he started making child porn, but that's just my guess.
Also Sarah, you seem to be advocating that it's ok to posess child porn "b) what possible harm owning or ooking at a picture" is ok. Along your line of reasoning, what difference is selling that picture you posess? So now we're at selling child porn is ok. How far should we go down this kind of reasoning until you would be satisfied? I do believe there should be a line, and it should be well defined.
"Some years ago, my wife worked in the Police in an eastern European country, in the department dealing with the fight against human trafficking....From the victims who managed to escape they got glimpses of a huge underground world. Yes, it's hard to set numbers - it's not like they are running censuses, aren't they? But each escaping victim would tell how many others have left behind, or through how many locations they were moved. My wife told me some of the stories they encountered and they were really horrific."
I call bollocks. The performers of sex acts are recorded now to prove they are over the age of consent, the producer of the porn can be visited, they are normal business, they sell their DVD through normal channels. It is a legal business in many countries. Their identities are traceable and the evidence is there on DVD.
The going rate for a doggy porn session is $2k, they don't spend $10k smuggling women to a different country to film something in a different country.
"Some of them develop very strong cases of the Stockholm syndrome. And even when they escape, they are stigmated for life and it's hard to reintegrate into the society."
Do you even listen to your own story, "Stockholm syndrome"? You sound like that anti porn campaigner Jacqui hired who claimed snuff movies were popular in the sex shops in Amsterdam, which pissed off the dutch no end being total bollocks.
In your fiction there are women smuggled from eastern europe to other place, to film sex acts with dogs, because it's somehow easier to smuggle the person than the *camera* into their country, that this great expense is paid in order to film this act.
When in reality, they do it for money, it's a lot cheaper to pay a girl to do a dog than to kidnap/traffic them to somewhere else to film the act.
It's fiction, and it shows two things to me, firstly you are from the UK, because your perception of foreign places is of a 'wild frontier' and not real life. Secondly that you imagine a woman wouldn't do such a 'disgusting' thing for money unless coerced, which indicates to me that you've never been poor or hungry.
Interesting story, and I don't disbelieve it, but I question your conclusions. First of all, do you know all the details about your co-worker's arrest? Did he really create child porn or only "make" it by downloading it? And what kind was it? Given that child porn could mean a picture of a 17-year-old in a consensual act, that label alone doesn't tell use much.
I do think it's possible to have an unhealthy interest in porn, and having a huge amount on a work computer isn't a good sign. I don't like to use the word addiction, since that implies a physical dependancy, but it can become an obsession, like many thing. But how do you get from there to "extreme porn should be illegal"?
Or are you arguing for outlawing all porn, even though you think an interest in it can be healthy? That would at least make some kind of sense. Otherwise I don't see how you intend to stop this supposed escalation effect.
This guy you knew already jumped from legal to illegal porn, right? So making more of it illegal wouldn't help. Unless you made it all illegal, so he wouldn't have been exposed to its corrupting effects. Wait. But what about soft-core erotic images? We'd have ban those too, or they might tempt someone to look at some for that forbidden "hardcore" stuff they've heard about.
Simply put, possession of material the existence of which necessitates the previous commission of a criminal act or acts should not be, in and of itself, a crime. The exception being in the case that it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the individual in possession of such material conspired directly, regarding the commission of the aforementioned act(s), with the party or parties who actually committed the same.
Since it's not clearly defined anywhere what "extreme porn" actually is, you have to wonder how are the authorities monitoring for this "crime". What's "extreme" to one person is merely "meh" to another.
Quite frankly, I don't get how a woman masturbating a horse is animal cruelty. Giving a horse an orgasm is a crime???
until the pictures on your PC that have been legal for ages are suddenly declared illegal and get you banged up for 2 years.
What we have are laws dreamed up by the government in order to silence a particular area of the media on the basis said media will trash the government and lose them votes.
The media is led not by a moral duty to the country, but by whatever issue/story/outrage will sell them the most newspapers (or get the most TV viewers)
Which is why you see headlines such as "Government to give drunks asbos" when there are laws already for dealing with drunks and the premises that sell drink to underage or drunk people.
The extreme porn laws were bought in because one murderer got his rocks off watching extreme porn... if only he'd got his rocks off watching reality TV shows.....
There is nothing wrong with possessing dirty porn because the campaigners needs to add 'trafficking' or 'nukes' or 'kiddies' or whatever to justify their argument.
If they can't rationalize their prosecution of ordinary people without building an elaborate fantasy around it, then we're locking people up for other people's elaborate fantasies.
If Sarah permits we can link to NSFW websites and we'll go through who the actresses are, the agency they book through, their rate cards, etc. trouble is the web cache of such sites would be a criminal offense in the UK, and quite frankly I'm not sure we can even discuss it without some pompous arch-bishop chief constable abusing his police powers.
But reality can't enter this conversation can it? We had that 'study' from Jacqui Smith, that came *after* she announce she was going to ban 'extreme' porn to justify her previous decision: Rapists admit to frequently having iPods ergo iPods causes rape.... erm sorry, I mean rapists frequently admit to viewing *porn*, hence *porn* causes rape.
She was rubbish, and the new Home Secretary won't fix any of her mistakes.
I have in my possession photographic images of Thatcher, Blair, Brown and Mandelson. Does my ownership of these images imply that I am in some way complicit in their criminal mismanagement of the Uk economy over the last thirty years?
As to why any normal person would allow such depraved and obscene material into their home I can only say that I do so on the recommendation of my therapist who assures me that my depression will be alleviated if I spend at least ten minutes each day throwing darts at this gallery of political Neanderthals.
I do worry that all these perforations may be misconstrued by the thought police as sexual holes.
I have misgivings about all possession laws, whether for photos, data, or chemicals. That is not to say that possession of some of these items should never ever be an offence, but they do have a risk in that no proof seems to be required as to how the offending item came into your possession. So this makes it really easy for some malicious person to stitch you up. All they have to do is get access to either your premises, your computer, or even your jacket, and they can put something into your possession that can have you in real trouble. Just how do you prove that the litle bag of white powder hidden in your lounge was put there by some unknown third party, or for that matter by the police officer doing the search?
I can see the point in discouraging people from possessing and circulating pictures of child abuse, if only on the grounds of reducing the market for the stuff and hence the temptation for people to create more. OTOH I would also be inclined to classify napalming children as a form of abuse, which would make a very famous prize winning photograph from the Vietnam war illegal. So it is not that easy.
On the trafficking side of things, you don't have to watch very much of the legal stuff (legal where I am anyway, pretty much similar to what would be legal in the USA, with participants over 18 and names etc on record) to see that some of the participants, both women and men, are enjoying what they are doing, and some are not. OK, that is pretty subjective, and I suppose it is possible that some are really hating it and are just very good actors. I personally can quite enjoy seeing an attractive couple having a lot of fun together as a preliminary to doing likewise with my wife, and we very much prefer movies where the participants are in fact having fun. I concede that this would be harder to tell with animals, but then that stuff doesn't interest me anyway, and I find it hard to beleive that the animal has given informed consent. Shouldn't the animal be over 18 too?
Jacket icon...with someone dropping something illegal into my pocket
It's of course your right to believe or not my story. All that I said is true. I am from Eastern Europe and I was poor. And having grown up under a communist regime, I understand better than you do the dangers of an over-powering government with a strong addiction to surveillance.
I didn't say that women are trafficked for being shown in porn movies - although that happends sometimes too. They are trafficked for much worse things. Just because you don't know any illegal brothels, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
Currently I live in Netherlands, where prostitution has a very clear legal framework. An indeed I think this is a better system and it does cut down a lot on trafficking - but still, it doesn't stop it completely. There were victims retrieved from Netherlands too. A "slave owner" makes more money and doesn't have to bother about any legal restrictions - or even taxes for that matter.
I don't have anything against legal prostitution, as I don't have anything against porn, no matter how extreme. As long as everything is done consensual, government has no business telling people what to do, watch or think.
Basically there are two main points I wanted to make:
1. Hunting porn watchers under the pretext of fighting traffic is stupid and in fact counter-productive, as we've seen here quite clearly. It actually makes people to dismiss the problem of trafficking altogether.
2. Trafficking is a serious problem and it doesn't disappear simply by pretending that it doesn't exist.
"You carried out a terrorist act = Crime"
"You are going to carry out a terrorist act = Crime"
"You are thinking about carrying out a terrorist act = Crime - This is where we currently are."
"And soon"
"Are you thinking of carrying out a terrorist act? = Crime"
You missed out:
Are you thinking? = Crime
And
Are you? = Crime.
Interesting choice of words you use viz "pervert" and "get a girlfried"...
Oddly enough in the last century, those who wanted to get themselves a *boyfriend* instead were branded as "perverts" and, indeed, at times could be locked up for their actitivies.
It wasn't that they were doing any harm to anyone, it wasn't that their activities were non-consensual, it wasn't that they were a threat to children (despite the media pushing scare stories about all of these) it was simply that there were a bunch of narrow-minded bigots who thought "we don't like this, so *they* should not be allowed to do this and we'll use any justification we can find (whether it's factually based or not) in order to get laws through to stop them from engaging in their 'perversions'".
Those are exactly the same sort of arguments that were pushed to con people into passing the Dangerous Pictures Act. So, is that the sort of mindset you support? It certainly seems that way.
"...I would imagine that the case against bestiality porn is that animals, like children, are considered unable to give consent, thus the DVDs feature depictions of real unconsensual sex...."
Wait. Hold up.
Are you suggesting that the same right to withdraw or withhold consent that human (children or otherwise) hold should be extended to animals? Isn't that the ridiculous line touted by PETA; "Animals are people too"?
Well, they're not. We slaughter animals for our own use on a collosal scale on a daily basis, we use them in entertainment, we keep them (sometimes) in dreadfully poor conditions. We don't seek consent for any of THOSE activities, why should we seek it for anything else that we want to do with them?
Why the moral line drawn abitrarily here, and not on the subject of KILLING the animal? If I made a video wherein I shot a rabid dog, would I be subject to prosecution? What if it were a healthy dog? What about a kitten?
Or, how about it was a white shark that was known to have eaten someone?
Where on earth are people drawing this line? The Ebola virus has the right to live, unmolested?
(granted, making a video of someone sexually abusing a virus, or shooting it would be particularly difficult, but would it be amoral?)
"i definitely wouldn't want someone with those interests around my pets or my kids"
No sir! I also wouldn't want anyone who watches horror or thriller movies near me. They will obviously recreate what they have seen on their neighbours.
These video game players are also a real liability. They like to shoot people and commit violent acts in a virtual world, what is to stop them from doing it in the real world?
Also some novels depict rape and violence, I'm sure the people who read such filth will go out and recreate what they have read.
If only we could ban everything, control everything people read, watch and listen to, and limit what they talk about. There needs to be some kind of.. thought police. Free speech is dangerous. If people were not aware of these things, they would not happen.
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