'Extreme porn' law could criminalise millions

Stupified

Isn't 'Extreme' also covered by "Violent"? Don't we already have a law against that?

They wouldn't dare make les'ing out illegal, would they?

Say it ain't so!

Definition please

Any danger of sparing a paragraph to explain or give the Bill's definition of 'extreme pornography'? Until then, I'll have to assume that the naked skydiving picture on my HD will put me in the clink.

Halo Bill, 'cos I'm really a goody goody

No more good laws left to pass...

This is whats keeping the average brit up at night? (no pun intended) So you must have solved all other societal problems then, and now you can concentrate on the real problem, what the `right` kind of porn is.

I am glad I live in Canada, you'll have to pry my extreme porn from my cold dead (although wonderfully soft) hands.

But seriously you brits are crazy.

Mines the one with all the tissues in the pocket, no that ones the Baroness Millers, the one with the Vaseline in the pocket.

Sadly it excludes rated films

otherwise that would be Michael Winner removed from history.

Sax and Violins on TV...

I think people always get this backwards. Porn doesn't cause violence, but instead, people who have violent dispositions are more likely to like extreme porn. So:

--Many peaceful people like porn==this does not cause them to do violent acts, but suggestible (weak minded) people seeing dehumanizing images constantly may become desensitized, and think that this is "normal behavior" The same goes for any 'adult' entertainment, whether it be booze, drugs, gambling, violent video games, fundamentalist religions, etc.

--People who are already violent probably like extreme porn==the same angry (and often corrupted sexual) need that feeds violent urges, is perfectly suited to and finds expression in hardcore porn. Perhaps this 'outlet' may even give violent people some release (no pun intended) and actually reduce violence (but this is just my opinion)

So perhaps the answer is that people that are stable adults should be free to do what they want in life, as long as it isn't hurting anyone, but those that have proven to be a hazard to others should be counseled, locked up if need be, but permitted to have all the porn they desire.

It's all so clear to me now Dave...

THIS is why the various departments of gov.uk are so reticent in investigating the BT/Phorm issue.

Mass Internet Monitoring (and CENSORSHIP!).

All carried out 'independantly' by a "ligitimate e-commerce business".

How PHUCKING CONVENIENT would that be.

Even Orwell would be impressed by the deviousness.

Vague laws

How is anyone to know whether their porn collection is legal? Or is it like terrorism - call the police and let them make the judgement?

To the PTB, please define 'extreme'.

A list of medical terms will be fine.

Worrying

These are links to the proposed statute and the explanatory notes.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmbills/130/07130.43-46.html#j400

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmbills/130/en/07130x-f.htm#index_link_104

There are going to be a lot of people who may wish to engage in or view images of BDSM activity who will now be in serious danger of being imprisoned for up to 3 years.

The act itself seems hypocritical if it's purpose is to prevent copycat violence (which is generally considered to be a minute problem anyway, see Bowling for Columbine) but still allows the very images it wants to prevent so long as they have been classified. Under the act possession of a copy of the particularly eye-watering scene in the new Casino Royal where Bond is tortured by whipping between the legs would be illegal and punishable by 3 years inside if it was in a pornographic context. What's to stop someone watching that film for sexual arousal and the deciding to go out and do the same thing to someone. Just because it isn't on the top shelf doesn't stop anyone getting sexual pleasure.

Special two for one laws

So, this government creates yet more law that it has no intention of enforcing. This will just be another tick-box charge that will be included should the coppers accidentally come across(!) someone with illegal porn. "OK lad, we've caught you selling nasty porn to kiddies. Have you a computer? Have you a modem? Right we've also got you for extreme porn."

Why does our stupid government think that the internet so different that it needs special laws?

But what does it MEAN?

One person's "extreme" includes BDSM & gimping. To another, it would include homosexual. Bukkake? BBWs? Anything more explicit than "Emmanuelle"...?

Do we have any actual definitions as to what is to be included in this classification?

I will withold opinion on whether this is good or bad until I know what it affects.

Paris, for what I should hope are rather obvious reasons!

WTF?

Did I fall asleep and wake up in China ?

They need to think again

So the Act will criminalise the depiction of activity "which threatens a person’s life".

Doesn't waving a knife around threaten someone's life? They are not actually hurt. Merely the threat.

But a video of someone actually being raped seems to be okay. No threat to kill, just forceably restrained. No injury. And they are alive and human. No problem.

Sub title no joke - you should be afraid

Against the hideous vagaries of the Obscene Publications Act, now there's this.

The Ministry of Justice turned to Catherine Itzin (a woman who has campaigned for years against pornography*) for its Rapid Evidence Assessment ("a tool for getting on top of the available research evidence on a policy issue, as comprehensively as possible, within the constraints of a given timetable") of the harm from "Extreme Porn":

http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/research280907.htm

and unsurprisingly gets the assessment it, in effect, asked for...EP is bad.

(Backgrounder - Itzin cited "sources" in her 1993 book that snuff films were not only in circulation, but available from video stores. This contrasts with the conclusion of all major agencies worldwide that no snuff films have ever been discovered.)

There are serious methodological errors in the compilation of the REA:

http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/mislead.html

In other words, the assessment is inaccurate and unreliable; law and policy made upon its conclusions will be wrong.

This section of the CJB is frighteningly vague; it leaves the ultimate assessment of "extreme" (and indeed "pornographic") in the hands of the prosecution. If it's passed into law, anyone who enjoys anything beyond a photographic version of the Joy of Sex needs to download some plausibly deniable crypto tools and get themselves a good passphrase.

freedom to do exactly what we tell you

So it is official then. No matter how completely out of whack you are with society's norms, no matter how gullible or weak minded you are, no matter how unattainable or stupid your ideals be, regardless of how impossible or expensive it will be to police... a law can be passed to force every last free thinking individual in the country to do exactly as you tell them eh? Just lets all wait for this, I see it now, the great UK Mass Debate during the 2008 summer porn rallys, fuelled with eco-rage, bankrupt banks and unemployed teachers.

Whatdowewant - gynocological accuracy

Whendowewantit - well, about midnight would be nice.

Re: Naked Skydiving

I think that's "Xtreme" Porn. Which is of course completely different to "Extreme Porn"

@AC & Mike

"Definition please"

"But what does it MEAN?"

I think that's the concern. It doesn't appear they've specified a definition, meaning it could be used as a "catch-all" for about anything more than soft porn.

Paris, because even her porn could be become illegal.

This has nothing to do with pornography

This has everything to do with creating breathing space for the authorities to bring criminal charges against people that they just don't like.

The Government may have no intention of proactively policing this legislation, but it would come in mighty handy if you were to search someone's home under suspicion of, let's say, terrorism and in the absence of any real evidence stitch them up on having weird sexual tastes. Bring a microscope down far enough in to someon'es life and you're bound to find SOMETHING.

The only people who need to fear this are those that up until now could be confident that they are honest, law abiding citizens who's only 'crime' is to like a bit of B&D, or who just happen to be curious about it.

Look at RIPA, it was introduced to combat terrorism and is now used to spy on children (but it strangely doesn't apply to BT and Phorm).

In Russia, there is no legislation against criticising Vladimir Putin but look at the number of publications that get shut down for 'financial irregularities, 'tax fraud' or 'copyright infringment'. Just add 'unusual sexual tastes' to that list.

Mine's the one with the matching tinfoil hat.

Time is very short, please lobby the Lords NOW!

Firstly, many thanks to El Reg for letting people know about these proposals for a "Dangerous Pictures Act".

I, and many others, including members of Liberty, Feminists Against Censorship and the Spanner Trust have been lobbying against them since they were first introduced, because they are a) completely vague and ill-defined, being based on someone's subjective opinion of what an image appears to show (ie if it is "grossly offensive or disgusting" and if they think it "risks serious injury to a person's breasts, genitals or anus", even if the participants are consenting adults and the acts shown are entirely legal) and b) introduce Thought Crime into English Law because they are based on the idea that "if people don't see this stuff, they won't try to do it!"

There is still time to lobby the House of Lords (the Government wants to force this Bill through by May 8th, so the odds are they'll guillotine the debate in the Commons meaning that MPs won't even get to discuss these proposals).

Visit http://www.seenoevil.org.uk/phpBB2/index.php and scroll down for the thread "Just less than a month to go. Write to the Lords now." This thread contains a list (about the 8th post down) of all the Lords who have e-mail addresses. Also in that section you'll find a number of letters written by myself and others which have arguments you can use to base your letters on if you want.

There are other arguments such as those in the above article and ones that can be found on http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/index.html

The Lib Dems Lords are already onside, but we need to persuade the Cross Benchers, and Tories (if the Tories hadn't abstained, the proposals would have been voted out) and, indeed, the Labour Lords (who aren't as sheep-like as their MPs) that such a law has no place in this country (it belongs in places like China, Iran or North Korea!)

You can find more details of which party (if any) a Lord is part of by visiting http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peers/ and there's also links there that will let you send messages via the House of Lords fax machine.

Lord Hunt, for the Government said "I recognise that it would be anomalous for a person to be committing an offence by possessing an image of an act which he undertook perfectly lawfully. We intend to introduce at Third Reading a defence which addresses precisely that situation" but this seems to suggest it will cover only acts which the picture owner participated in such that any other images, even when featuring consenting adults, would still be illegal.

Since we are probably not going to be able to get these draconian laws thrown out, the next best thing is for them to include a defence that provided a reasonable person would assume that *any* of the participants were consenting, then an image is not illegal.

Please, people, lobby the Lords NOW! Be polite, be concise, be reasonable, but don't be a criminal for looking at "Dangerous Pictures!"

PS Re Mycho's comment "Sadly it excludes rated films", well, yes, but only *as a whole*! If you take a clip from a BBFC and, again in someone else's subjective opinion, it is "extreme" and you did it "for sexual arousal" then you've just committed a crime!

hmmm...

Naked skydiving...

I'm actually going to look that one up out of curiousity.

Maybe naked bungee jumping...

Fuck you New Labia!

Castch-all laws intended to catch all -- all but their sheep are guilty.

Mine's the blunt-knife-in-the-small-artery-in-the-cold-in-the-wods proof one.

Fuck-it that's my last comment on here regarding the government. I just hope we get nuked by Kim Jong-Il soon, because this country is beyond repair.

See this is what happens...

We're in a horrible half-way house. Huge rafts of legislative power are handed over to the EU already, so the provincial government (for that is what it is), not wanting people to realise that it is effectively no longer the de-facto or even de-jure government of this country, makes lots of big noises in the few areas it can still control by pushing through more and wide-ranging new legislation in those tiny, tiny areas and micromanaging everything where it still has the power to legislate. Why else the obsession with targets, with increasingly meddling in what were once personal, private matters and so on? It's because that's all they have left, and to satisfy the ego, the delusion of influence, or to simply con people into believing that they are still relevant, the entire political class goes along with it, because to admit otherwise would make people realise that there's simply no point in the Westminster parliament any more.

Laws like this are the result of all that. They criminalise what was once the domain of individual discretion, because that's pretty much all our political class can meddle with these days.

(Hard) Labour at it again !

Good grief here we go again with an other labour half wit idea borrowed from King Canutes' (remove some letters) advisors. A government bereft of good ideas so it has to think up some really really stupid ones.

Anyone know when the next Vogon constructor fleet is passing ?

GET ME OFF THIS LOONY PLANET !

You humans no nothing about Extreme Porn (tm) its the number one show in the intergalactic viewing charts - you want to see what the Gbrownians did on last weeks show !

@ Rande Knight / Vague laws

"How is anyone to know whether their porn collection is legal?"

Easy, ask your mother, she'll tell you.

question

what about being involved in the... errr.... filming of such things?

and can i know claim political asylum in holland because my life style choices are being repressed and made illegal by the British government?

3rd Option

There is a 3rd option. Massive civil unrest has always been a very effective way of catalyzing political change.

Just saying.

Extreme

I can imagine a scenario whereby someone like 'Mary Whitehouse' is in charge of deeming what's extreme or not. This miserable old bag used to comlpain about anything on TV that slightly offended her moral values.

Laws make criminals

Two-dogs-fücking

If I watch two adults making love, presumably that is acceptable. But outside my window I see two-dogs-fücking: "Ooooh Fido, das ist schön. Bark in my ear, big boy..". That might land me in court.

I like porn. It's a nice substitute for human company, which occasionally is not acceptable. Let's ban humans.

Although criminalising Paris Hilton might be a step in the right direction.

@Definition please

Anything that anyone other than you thinks is offensive.

A bit like the obscene publications act, even the coppers that are arresting you have no idea if you've actually comitted a crime, merely that you *might* have.

It's entirely subjective and should not be on the books.

I need examples...

...Lots of examples. What's just inside the law, and what's just outside the law. The government should provide these example on-line so that everyone can see them and understand the legal limit.

Political coup

The labour party have realised that they are going to be booted out at the next election for being so crap, so they have made up this law to get most of the opposition MP's arrested and hold on to their power. Let's face it how many kinky MP's are actually out there.

The helicopter? Because it's being flown by Ceiling Cat.