Since it would be illegal to possess a copy of extreme porn, and I guess to watch it, could the BBFC be prosecuted merely for viewing any illegaly films which are submitted to them?

but don't have the ability to securely delete them beyond my own abilities to recover them?

Am I expected to throw out my hard drive?

bah. Labour out. The suck beyond belief. They seem determined to send us back to the 50s, economy and all.

... the burning rubber of a GovUK U-Turn.

Yup, that film with Sir Sean and Wesley..

The scene where the girl is being choked to death whilst having sex.... BANNED!

Great film, but hardly a film worth banning...

Pants to the Law

So that's pretty-much all halfway hardcore porn banned then.

Or are human beings being defined as vegetable or mineral for the purposes of this legislation?

Although I suppose that in all fairness the vegetable classification may be accurate enough to apply to some of those pushing this vague and laughable legislation through..

Excellent film. If I remember correctly it contains several scenes ripe for the prosecution, including a rape scene, I think.

What ever happened to that film (I forget the title) which caused such a furore because a rape victim appeared to enjoy the act?

There's the original(?) Crash film too, I haven't seen either, but I am told that the 1996 film includes scenes of a sexual nature with, erm, an injury, the quote is something like "no, not there, here."

Ugh! This is gross, who cares if it's banned?

In the same week they force deviants onto the streets and out of easy networked view, by banning them from satisfying their weird lusts, they also announce that the self same men will be liable for prosecution if the woman who is taking his money for sex is trafficked without his knowledge.

What an absolutely brilliant way of breeding serial killers.

I wonder, will the government be issuing free hammers to these men?

I wish had no female relatives to be put at risk by the nutters they're creating and forcing out onto the streets.

What about the internet classic image. goatse.

Let's face it, goatse is pretty offensive, and it's certainly pretty disgusting. It could result in a serious anal injury.

I wear a PA ring thru my bits - did it about 20 years ago..

Have a few images I made via a digy camera now somewhere on my hard drive. I wanted to see what it looked like from a 3rd party view point... (never distributed to anyone - too shy)

so the bit where it says

"serious injury" is not defined, but "could include the insertion of sharp objects or the mutilation of breasts or genitals".

Well thats me up infront of the judge... Do i get on some register somehere - I'm a danger to society....

posting as anon sorry

ps - Im going to delete them - opps -i have the ability to recover them so that no good as well..

Paris because she would not be offended my by images

They seem to have done a great job of fucking our economy aand stabbing it to death -- does that mean news is now banned?

So we have the "guidlines" at last, except that they provide very little "guidance" and mostly just re-iterate the same old twaddle that we've heard before, not to mention that, in places, they actually contradict the law as written eg it says an image must be "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an offensive nature", yet the guidance says it must fit all the criteria, ie it should be AND of an offensive nature.

We also don't know what is "life threatening". Skydiving or riding a motorcycle can be "life threatening" if done without adequate safety precautions, so if someone takes adequate safety precautions when involved in breath-play, would that be ok? I doubt it.

Ditto for "serious injury". I actually asked the MoJ if that would be defined as GBH, since that's the definition the courts used, but they've decided that, no, it isn't, presumably because that would be too stringent a test for them to catch the stuff they don't like.

"Explicit and realistic" are, frankly, tautologous. If it's porn, it's probably explicit. If it's real people (even if acting) it's "realistic", so no help there.

"Obscene" is also said to take its definition from the dictionary instead of the mass of case law from the Obscene Publications Act, yet Chambers has "Obscene: UK Law - Liable to corrupt and deprave", so is that included or not?

Also they keep claiming that this act will only catch stuff which is "illegal to publish under the OPA", yet as the article points out, it will catch excerpts from films which are *not* obscene when shown as a whole, yet *will* be obscene if taken out of context!

And, finally, we have the statement that if you've deleted the images you're ok, unless you're a techie and have undelete software, in which case you'll need to use a file shredder to be safe.

The MoJ also basically say that it's going to be up to the Magistrates or Judges to decide if an image fits the definitions given, in other words they've made a huge mess and then want the courts to clean it up and we're left with the definitions of "pornographic" returning to the 1970s where "porn is whatever gets the Judge turned on"!

PS @ I Wonder:

The BBFC would not be prosecuted because paragraph 65 says:

65 Defences: general

(1) Where a person is charged with an offence under section 63, it is a defence for the person to prove any of the matters mentioned in subsection (2).

(2) The matters are—

(a) that the person had a legitimate reason for being in possession of the image concerned;

The BBFC can claim to have a legitimate reason for possession, just as the police officers who have to evaluate seized material are allowed to possess it.

PPS @ Richard Cartledge

If you think it's gross, don't look at it. But don't be as arrogant as this Government and think that *your* personal tastes should define what everyone else is allowed to look at.

PPPS @ John Ozimek: "Exteme" porn...?! ;-)

They have pretty much one major task to perform, MPs - they do it all the time, even when it's not necessary, just to prove that they're in control and to placate the 'outraged' and 'offended': they write laws.

And they cannot do it. They botch the terms, throw open the consequences with abandon, broaden the remit to include possibly anyone and fail, unremittingly, to place proper restraints and boundaries on the powers they enact.

They cannot write laws to save their worthless skins. They are unqualified for their jobs and their wanton incompetence impacts upon the lives of us all, wrecking those of any number.

Where we may be prosecuted for fictional but realistic IMAGES of non-real POSSIBLE harm, there is rarely any negative consequence for the very real harm politicians do to us with their insane scribblings.

An itchy pox on the vast majority of them.

I wonder what they mean by that - the OED, or Collins, or Cambridge. I'm sure they'll differ in the specifics (not even mentioning which edition)

Or is the Gov planning to publish "The Ordinary Dictionary" before this becomes enforced?

"9 Dead Gay Guys" features a scene where Carol Decker is asphyxiated with a scarf by Steven Berkoff, while he's taking her from behind.

I've never felt the same about t'Pau since seeing that...

I am honestly sick and tired of Crash Gordon and Wacky Jacqui, they are now purely reacting to whoever shouts loudest (and on most occasions the vocal minority) and not considering what they are doing...the economy has been brought to its needs, politicians who's job it is to release information are being arrested, information silos are being built to snoop on everyone, and now this pile of crap.

Labour OUT! Please *do* let the door hit you on the way out.

last I looked humans were animals.

On the contrary, and I ain't no psychologist, but I would suggest that by being able to freely watch this weird stuff, it is only further desensitising them from it and making them think it's "normal".

However.... why ban "life-threatening" scenes only related to sex? Double standards.

Doesn't affect me anyhow, I like to see people enjoying themselves!!

Paris... well do I even need to explain why?!

It's always said, of course, that the British ruling classes function on a diet of spanking, both handing it out and taking. One might mention Max Mosley in this context. Which makes the choice of ``serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals'', and the exclusion of buttocks, quite interesting.

Unless of course the government plan kicking in peoples doors at random to perform detailed house and hard drive searches

ahh.. can just hear old Judge Dredd laughing

Paris: because she knows all about the problems of having a dodgy video

Secondlife really would have to get its act together for any "reasonable person" to think that "the people and animals portrayed were real". I think its safe for some years...unfortunately.

"portray activity that threatens harm to life or limb,"

Shouldn't this be life AND limb?

"involves sex with a corpse or animal."

Is this an inclusive or exclusive OR? My friend, who is Welsh, needs to know.

If you're smart enough to recover files, you should be able to make them unrecoverable as well.

Does this mean I shouldn't bring my penis mutilation collection when i visit the UK?

Because to me there is a clear causal link here, the mother of a rape victim decides the fix to rape is to ban violent porn, demands an extreme porn ban, August 2006. The government says it plans to make possession of extreme porn a 3 year prison sentence.

IN 2006:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/5297600.stm

September 2007 Jacqui Smith, MP for Reddich commission a 'study' to survey the research and decide on the law they had already agreed a year eariler and concludes from this 'research' that there is a causal link:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/280907a.pdf

I am forced therefore to conclude that Jacqui Smith NuLabour MP for Reddich, defender of freedom of the press and protector of freedom to vote for whoever you link including the BNP or Tories, is a Time Lord, and not a fooking liar who makes up evidence to fit whatever causal link she wants to claim.

Because there's no way Gordon Brown would employ a fooking liar would he? No she must be a Time Lord then!

Whats going to happen the first time MP gets nicked. If UK politicians are any thing close to US politicians, the onse that pushed this crap are the very ones that would consume this type of porn.

That is a good photo...

Hold on a second there are blue flashing lights outside and someone is knocking at my door...

I'll be back in a few minutes after I find out who it is...

...

...

...

...

Hostel 2? Slicing off a penis and feeding it to a dog? I have a feeling that DVD alone would make me a criminal?

The law's an ass. And an ass that's not been spanked too much, at that.

I wonder if this twaddle affects covers of published records, such as John Zorn's Torture Garden (mild cover shot here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Garden_(album) -- the interior record artwork I'll leave the less sensitive reader to google). As far as I know you can buy this record at such purveyors of extreme porn as amazon.co.uk.

To Graham above who says that you're OK if ...

(a) that the person had a legitimate reason for being in possession of the image concerned;

Presumably a "legitimate reason" is I downloaded it off the internet. An "illegitimate reason" would be that aliens from the planet Zog beamed it onto my hard-drive?

Ain't nothing but mammals

last I looked humans were animals.

----------------------

Humans are not animals. We are Gods creatures and made in his image.

With the exception of Pediophiles and Pornographers of cause.

Oh and rock and roll singers, they're the spawn of Satan.

Oh and I forgot to mention blasphemers, philanderers, geeks, people who enjoy sex, people who use the Internet, any one who disagrees with me, that woman across the

street who put up net curtains last week in her front room; I know what you where doing I've got the photographs to prove it.

Oh bugger now I have to hand my self in for having pictures of extreme porn.

Dear Government,

Fuck you.

No really, fuck you very much.

Yours sincerely,

a lifelong Labour voter (aged 42 and a half)

Being pornographic, grossly offensive (to some) and portraying activity that threatens harm to life (through HIV)

In fact, any non-condom porn, gay or straight, is probably illegal due to it depicting an activity that is potentially causing risk to life, and there's always going to be someone (religious extremists?) who find it grossly offensive.

In fact, given that condoms aren't 100% effective and could split at any time, sure all intercourse is now prohibited in porn?

Shoot your extreme porn in front of a green screen, and superimpose a perpetual motion machine in the background. Throw in some plot notes about the scene taking place on a space ship at light speed. etc, etc, ad nauseum.

From the IMDB entry for "Visions of Ecstasy":

Recommendations

If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:

- - - - -

Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers

Hmm, must watch that again. I must have missed the gang-rape scene...(?)

"Two interesting features of this new law arise in respect of potential defences. The first is where the material in question is a BBFC classified film, that should be an absolute defence. However, if you extract images or sequences from that film, your defence may fall."

Damn, there goes our collection of screenshots from movies - most 'extreme' porn is so dreadfuly dull (like the Satanic Sluts image from a previous report) or looks like the person is not actually enjoying themselves (like the slightly weird performance artists who stick skewers through their own tits and stuff). At least movie depictions of gore have acting and budget.

I gotta be honest with you, there's some pretty revolting stuff out there, even if it is consensual, but I'm not worried about people viewing it and getting hard, I'm worried about them. I know a lot of fetish performers and it seems like a majority of them have some form of dysmorphia. No real effort seems to have been put into the discussion of this as a psychological problem.

Saying that, I also choose to be pierced and tattooed and 'live an alternative lifestyle' (as it were), so any help which would be offered to those who I perceive as being a bit fucked up better be voluntary, non-aggressive, compassionate and generally right on the money, since they might get round to applying it to me, too. Judging by the standards of current medical and psychological practice, we maybe better skip that idea just now.

This idea of banning books and publications is so seventeenth century. I'm sick of this new Puritanism making me feel uneasy about my personal security. Someone on here yesterday commented that David Walliams said 'shag' on the radio and there was an apology - is sex that filthy, dirty and disgusting that you can never mention it at all? Anyone who talks in any non scientific way about 'sexual intercourse' is a weirdo. 'Darling, would you like to have intercourse?' It's just such utter bullshit, like the Daily Mail calling a reefer a 'marijuana 'spliff' '. The concurrent acceptance of massive levels of violence in mainstream culture merely underlines this hypocrisy.

As a collector of erotica, I have at least one item which is illegal in my house. As a matter of fact, I find it distasteful, but since it was acquired on a trip to Japan, where the particular 'kink' is particularly accepted, and it is in a manga that I got from a vending machine for 250 yen, I consider it simply a souvenir of my trip and it is placed with my other books on erotic art and sexuality.

Anyone interested in this sort of thing should very much look at the work of Gershon Legman, a librarian with an interest in erotica and its suppression who introduced origami to the West.

Also, it is very interesting to note that the Victorian values which strove to remove the overtly sexual from art meant that the buxom naked women who adorned the walls were replaced with whimsical images of naked children, often in sexual poses. Who knows, if the social and moral values of the time had not precluded Mr Charles Dodgson from taking pictures of healthy young matrons, would Alice in Wonderland have been written by a noted paedophile?

Censorship and prohibition are not good things, and they demonstrably don't work. But as Aldous Huxley said, the most important lesson we can learn from history is the inability of humans to learn lessons from history.

What's wrong with some cheap plastic fangs? £2.50 down the joke shop.

That's my extreme porn collection shredded. I'll just have to pop out and actually *do* some of this weird, sick stuff now. That's OK as long as I don't photograph / film any of it, right?

The guidelines require images to "have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.". Most people are not "sexually aroused" by violent porn, so presumable a "showcase" of such obnoxious porn automatically exempts them.

Conversely, many fetishes are not sexually explicit (eg. rubberwear). So your average Arnold Schwarzenegger movie may well be a huge sexual turn-on for some people, and hence, pornographic. But is it **realistic** to see Schwarzenegger's character murder so many people?

This seems to be a case that SOME people might find such images sexually arousing, AND, SOME people may consider the images to be realistic. But don't we all know that most porn is not realistic anyway?

Let's run a competition to see who can produce the most extreme porn that fails the guidelines. For example, it must not sexually arouse (eg. character look like female Labour politician, or wears baggy M&S knickers), and must not be realistically harmful (eg. picture shows a rubber knife, or gallons of ketchup, next to extreme porn image showing their use). And are you having sex with that cat on your lap?

"If you believe you have come across illegal pornographic material on a website ..."

for the extreme porn with el wacqui's head to show up on lez interweb....will she be jailed for BEING IN extreme porn...huh? serve the piece right

question is, will it be the boss or the BOFH to turn him in?

When I followed that IMDB link to "Visions of Ecstasy" under the section "If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:" it had Wallace & Gromit in "The Wrong Trousers". WTF?

Boggly eyed icon for obvious reasons.

While I find the kind of stuff the Government is trying to ban here utterly repugnant myself, and can see how the 'extreme porn' may have repercussions, how the hell are they going to police it and how much money has gone into this?

At a time of financial crisis, how much are they wasting on this scheme of making sure people on the internet "delete extreme porn, but not if they're techies, in which case they'll have to burn their computer". Why can't they just focus legislation on people who run the websites for extrem porn?

Also, how the flying HELL are they going to determine the level of expertise necessary to say whether someone can recover deleted files? I don't know how to, but I know with a Google search I could find software or instructions on how to. So what would I do if I was found to have it? Surely anyone with a net connection and knowledge of search engines ultimately is capable of recovering deleted files?

Any harm this genre causes would be prevented and any images people already own would come from a production from which any harm has already been done.

To police the computers of everyone who might have this would amount to a ludicrous amount of funds.

Skull and crossbones because that's not a cartoon - it's from my next violent porn production:

"Skulls and cross boners"

The key point here is that there has been absolutely no sign of a public debate. The proles are clearly too stupid to understand and the bourgeois obviously should know better. That there may be a genuine psycological discussion to be had over the effects of watching 'extreme porn' is neither here nor there. Also, it seems the question of whether or not there could be a wider libertarian justification for tolerating some of the images being labelled extreme porn, (or tolerating strong cannabis, militant religion, prostitution or Treasury leaks for that matter) is a question that we're not supposed to ask.

The rank hypocracy is another problem here (but this is not a suprise from Brown). In the context of a society where glamour model is listed as many girls' top choice for ideal job, one wonders if Brown is going after the right target. Surely women would benifit more from stopping supermarkets displaying pictures of semi-naked women with giant fake breasts and photoshopped waists and thighs on the front covers of Nuts and Zoo? Some proper sex education in schools and the government actively talking about the now ubiquitous objectification of women throughout the whole of society (which is worse now than it was before feminism was invented) may help even more. Or is this more about controlling the behaviour of those who enjoy anything that runs against Brown's private Christian moral sensibilities?

Apparently the term 'New Labour' is no longer applicable; I've read that it's 'Zanu Labour' now.

don't bother getting some photoshopped pics of the dumb old bint into some Xtreme-pr0n action... As _THAT_ isn't covered under the legislation. Staring is not a crime...

Instead on that day she's due to hold up some document or other in front of a bunch of television camera's wouldn't it be lovely if...

. . . "Oh My God! HOW on earth did that get in there!"

Again from Hostel 2. A naked woman hung from the roof, having her body slashed with a scythe, and another naked woman in the bathtub below being covered in her blood! I can see some action being taken against HMV and WH Smith for selling that obvious filth!

The problem as I see it, something bad happens, the newspapers whip up hysterical storm, Jacqui Smith makes a quick knee jerk law to jump on the hysteria bandwagon.

Then the hysteria dies down and everyone feels a foolish and hopes their leaders make a more balanced choice, something that makes sense when there is no hysteria.

But Jacqui can't then back down, she put her head on the line to produce an extreme law, she need to whip up the hysteria again, because only when the people are hysterical can she get this nutty stuff passed.

So we get her and the ACPO members that support her, whipping up a frenzy as laws go through parliament, and trying to suppress the debate with hysterical screaming.

Look at the 42 day detention thing, Parliament said no, Jacqui Smith then declares that she'll keep an emergency bill ready for the next bought of hysteria. Which no doubt she will be whipping up at the first opportunity.

Law making by hysteria.

IMHO, she's simply not fit to hold a senior position, she's made a law to transfer the blame from rapists to viewers of porn, from traffickers to johns, from terrorist to people who express opinions. She treats people like potential terrorists.

It makes sense to hysterical people to punish someone ANYONE when something bad happens, but in the cold light of day, she is simply prosecuting random people for things they are not responsible for.

> Why can't they just focus legislation on people who run the websites for extrem porn?

To quote from the Explanatory Notes produced by the Ministry of Justice:

"The proper functioning of the Internal Market in electronic commerce is ensured by the Internal Market clause, which means that information society services are, in principle, subject to the law of the Member State in which the service provider is established. In turn, the Member State in which the information society service is received cannot restrict incoming services."

In other words, the original idea as proposed in the Longhurst petition to "block access" to sites showing so-called "extreme pornography" would be illegal because these sites are legal in the Member States in which they are established.

That petition also called for the banning of sites "promoting violence against women", but there's never actually been any proof offered that these sites do "promote violence", it's simply a supposition (not backed up with facts) that this sort of material "encourages" violence against women (and, presumably, Female Domination sites "promote violence against men...?)

The fact that members of the BDSM community support the idea of Safe, Sane and, most importantly, *Consensual* play doesn't seem to matter to these people, nor that BDSMers are as opposed to non-consensual violence against others as anyone who signed that petition.

Probably this law will end up being used as a sort of "Consolation Prize" for the Police whereby if they nick you for a crime but are unable to charge you with it, they'll trawl through your computer and see if they can find any "extreme porn" just so they can justify the original arrest...

While i would like to choke Jacki Smith I certainly would not have sex with her while doing this for fear of breaking the law.

Just when you think the world is a better place and we are moving toward a less censored society, Jacki decides against all scientific data that violent porn causes crime.

But then since when did the government listen to experts ? (Cannabis, WMDs, NATO)

What Gordon and Jacki don't seem to get, even Darling doesn't get it, is after the next election they will all be resigning for giving labour it's lowest seat count in the commons since records began.

Yes Labour WE ALL HATE YOU ! after Afghanistan, Iraq, Data losses, Oil prices, Food prices, The credit crunch, ID Cards, Extreme porn laws. Spoilt for choice when it comes time to vote, BURY THEM !

Right - so anyone who's watched CSI knows the bloodbath isn't realistic - where's the arterial spray, whats with blood running down between her tits, etc. I can see /that/ one requirement tying the courts up for weeks if someone hired an expert witness.

But why is anyone surprised? This is from the same school as the recent prostitution proposals, ie a moral crusade pretending to be protection of the vulnerable. The authors aren't interested in protecting us, merely in forcing everyone to obey their personal view of morality - one which seems to have been born a bastard child of a feminist and a victorian dad.

My friend tells me this one's got it all - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-9LFXaVZf8A.

There go lots of photo opportunities involving politicians.

Excellent, The Register is turning into Have Your Say.

Just fucking wonderful.

I bet you can squeal like a pig.

... is like flogging a dead horse. Ooops.

So the advice still comes down to whether it would be offensive to a bitter old woman who's judgement is so poor she sees nothing wrong with roughing up opposition MPs with anti-terror police, and an angry grieving mother who clings to the belief that murderous tendencies must be the fault of pornography rather than sick individuals.

Oh, clause 21 means my defence is void, as I'm the author of a disc repair tool, which has the limited ability to recover to deleted data. So if I ever get any extreme porn spam, I have to wipe my hard disc. I better go an add a safe delete feature.

As I understand it Parlement invents laws but these are not fully formed. They have to be tested in court and case law then properly defines them.

Hopefully this will fix all the many problems and contradictions.

If not, then the government has basically made a law that can be interpreted any way it wants. We will all be breaking the law but it won't matter unless someone wants us punished for something.

From the guidelines:

"...21. Case law supports the view that, in normal circumstances, deleting images held on a computer is sufficient to get rid of them, i.e. to divest oneself of possession of them. An exception would be where a person is shown to have intended to remain in control of an image even though he has deleted it - that will entail him having the capacity (through skill or software) to retrieve the image. Porter [2006] WLR 2633..."

This will be interesting, then, once we have a case that gets to court: as the paedogeddon witchunt continues to prove, deleting images on a HDD is NO defence as far as the police in both the UK and US are concerned - they will actually use the fact the images have been deleted as further proof of guilt in court. We have a situation now where there is effectively no defence left to anyone caught in the paedogeddon purge, so complete has the erosion of justice for the accused become.

I await the first case involving extreme porn and will be watching to see how Plod subverts the law, yet again, to secure those all-important convictions...

the classic definition of "obscene" is "what ever gives the judge a "hard-on" ;)

in other words, what you and i may see as "not obscene" may very well be seen by a conservative person as "highly obscene"...

as an example, there is a movie from several years back where an Amish female has a child by a non-Amish male... they are "forced" into a separation where the mother returns to her Amish roots and lifestyle... the child's father retains custody of the child and takes numerous videos and pictures to send to the child's mother so that she won't miss out on the child's growth... however, her (the mother's) highly conservative father is a member of the state's gov't or has ties into said gov't... enough so that the child's father is brought up on charges of "interstate child pornography" since he lived in one state and the mother lived in another and he was sending her the VHS video tapes and Polaroid pictures...

i've just spent over 2 hours trying to find the movie's name so as to be able to point to it for others who are interested to be able to find it... the movie is based on true facts and i seem to recall that Dennis Quaid played the part of the father in the movie... however, i am unable to find anything related to such a movie :( i've seen this movie more than once and may very well be mistaken on who the actor is who plays the father but the religion involved is Amish, Mennonite or possibly even Mormon... it has been many years since i've seen the movie... it seems to me to have been something out in the early 80s, though...

> Ugh! This is gross, who cares if it's banned?

Not my cup of tea either, and not the kind of thing I would like to see. Mind you, neither is organised religion, football and xfactor. I do care if they ban such things though, its whats known as "a slippery slope" :

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

Hold on now, my old fella has some rings in him, does this mean that should I choose to keep pictures of them on my hard drive I could be prosecuted? Poor show!

... to see where this is going.

I don't think people need to worry too much about the police knocking on their doors. It's an easy win in the Commons - few MPs will be willing to be perceived as defending extreme porn in order to point out out the deficiencies with the legislation.

Once it's through, nothing of note will appear to happen for a while then you'll start reading articles on websites like El Reg about the exponential increase in activity surrounding ISP-level net filtering.

Fear (i.e. constant references to the "Criminal Justice Act 2008", supported by all parties and 'right-minded' people of 'good moral standard') will be used to quell any and all dissenting voices and we'll be another step along the road towards making the internet a safer place.

It would be interesting to run a sweepstake on what's next. Just for fun tho' - wouldn't want to fall foul of any online gambling legislation...

I do find people who get off on the kind of stuff being bandied around as hard to comprehend as the people making these laws...I mean animals and rape?? what the smeg??

wierd people!

anyone who derives enjoyment from Hostel films and knows scenes intimately, needs no more than to taken round the back of a building and given a bit of a kicking, not on camera of course.....although...they might actually enjoy a good kicking come to think of it

anyone who enjoys pointlessly violent movies or porn is just plain strange and not really deserving of my sympathy to be honest....and, to people who complain.....well if these *ahem* people *could* carry out these acts in real life, they already would, whether they can get their porn or not, surely? We have violent computer games legal and still have real crime don't we?

Not really into extremem porn i prefer vanilla porn but i have a question if my friend deletes his extreme porn before the police arrest him so gets away with it

but i don't know about it he then tells me he "accidentally" deleted some files and wants to recover it. so i working in it and capable of resoring his drive recover the whole thing as his my friend.

I then leave. the police then raid him again and arrest him

am i guilty of aiding and abetting? even though i didn't know and just recovered the drive for a friend or do i now have to monitor every file i recover for friends and family there by invading there privacey.

or looking at it another at work if i'm a company that recovers drives i'm bound by privacy laws to just recovery data not look at it aren't i effect aiding my customer to have extreme porn? or do i have to prove i didn't know the customer had it there in the first place ?.

"What almost all those involved agree – whether for or against – is that we shall not know how wide-reaching this new law will be until the first few cases are heard before a court. "

NO any law where you dont know its result before it goes through a court should not legally be allowed to be passed.

The same thing happened with the age discrimination laws. We had our company lawer give us a talk about that one and she said basically good luck becuase nobody knows how its going to work in practise until a few people have been tried.

Bollocks, laws should be self f*cking explanetory.

And like that guy said humans are animals!!

"Deleting an image will be sufficient to prove you no longer "possess" it – unless you have the skill to recover it. In which case you could still be done: techies beware"

I suggest we all send an email to our MPs explaining that any fule can google for "undelete" and "hard disk recovery" and, had we attached an extreme porn image to the email, they would now be in possession of an illegal image, with the knowledge to recover it, and only a fire axe through the hard-drive stands between them and prison.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

while Labour are not my refreshing hot beverage of any description I do have to say that rabid, "let's get labour" attitide which reigns on here is nuttier than squirrel doings! I mean, let's logically debate, seeing as this site is seemingly meant for the more intelligent section of society, not the tabloid readers, but the thinkers?

Viz, we use the following saying. "the extreme attracts the extreme of demenour and of thinking but it creates them not" ok, so people who watch this kind of thing (Down with this kind of thing! Careful now!) are already, shall we say, a little odd to begin with....would a 'normal' person find (even faked) pain and suffering of another human being or creature pleasurable? I venture an answer of 'nay!' (ahem). Thusly, those who partake of this entertainment are of the category of 'dodgy folk' by default, but so ( as someone pointed out earlier) are, in my mind, priests and those of certain extreme opinions. However some of these opinions are indeed banned from being broadcast, others are not. But here is the nub, what someone does in their own home is their business and their only AS LONG AS they do no harm to anyone in the execution of said business (however we enter onto thorny ground here; snuff movies, kidnap, GBH and rape movies made available for viewing, by creating an demand, are they indeed fuelling the 'market'? Like pedophiles who, while maybe not direct abusers themselves, download images of abuse are tried and convicted...does that law here apply?). Now we are torn are we not? Same as we are with the anti-terror legistlation, we lose rights but we are, we're assured, much safer than we were (of course not getting involved in the American Crusade TM C, Patent Pending, would have made us even safer)....but where do we draw the line between what is government invasion of privacy and actual good legislation?

Lets not forget that 15 years ago hardcore porn was banned in the UK and it had to be smuggled in from abroad, being caught doing which would get one a nice fine or some porridge for a spell and no-one suffered too much because of it. People beat away to the Daily Sport videos and suchlike (that charming see nothing kind of porn we've all watched, admit it).....it won't kill anyone not have to be more imaginative or form their own black market surely?

But, we have to weight, good thing or bad thing?

Bad thing if it is what might offend your granny which is banned and so forth (I for one don't have porn collection and, if I did, would not place it on display for all and sundry to see); like swearing, more than an inch of bare skin, and people who are younger and more attractive than them enjoying themselves? Bad thing.

Making people who encourage and participate in extreme acts which DO harm innocent victims accountable to some form of legal process? Good thing.

But which is it to be do we think?

So, an extract may be illegal, where a full film isn't. So if you lose the first reel of a film you can be in trouble, as it is no longer the entire film?

Don't say that is a ridiculous suggestion, it is nowhere near as ridiculous as this law.

Thin end of yet another NuLabour wedge.

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NURSE!

Or bits of them. What about a dildo made of bone? Or somebody clad in dead animal skin - oh wait, that's leather. Or what if someone you were making love with keeled over at the (in)appropriate time... It's all OK I guess if it's not being filmed, but with so many CCTV cameras how can we know? So many ways to break the law and so little time.

If I want to ride my motorcycle with out my helmet on, I should have every right to do that. At the same time, I shouldn't expect the NHS to clear up after me. If I want to watch extreme porn then I should be able to do that. If I want to use recreational drugs, I should be allowed to do that.

I'm not suggesting I want to do either. I don't. but people should have the right to make their own choices, regardless of nulabour's puritanical hogwash.

/rant.

"would a 'normal' person find (even faked) pain and suffering of another human being or creature pleasurable? I venture an answer of 'nay!'"

Well then you would be WRONG! I run a business making and selling BDSM gear and I have been to many fetish parties and seen "dangerous videos" where I have seen "pain and suffering" going on, but these are *consensual* acts engaged in by *consenting* adults!

You seem to make the same arrogant mistake that those who proposed this law did by assuming that your tastes are the ones that should govern what everyone else should or shouldn't see or do or be allowed to publish because you are "normal" and anyone who likes things that you don't like are "dodgy folk", well pardon me if I say BULLSHIT!

If you don't like it, don't look at it, but don't tell everyone else that, because you don't like it, they shouldn't be allowed to look at it.

If you (or the Government) could actually provide any genuine evidence of harm you might have a reasonable, logical case, but you don't, you simply have supposition and emotive arguments not backed up by any facts (and you cannot make a single *exceptional* case into a general case either).

You shoot your own argument in the foot by saying "Lets not forget that 15 years ago hardcore porn was banned in the UK", well, yes, it was and now it's legal, so by your arguments, all these "dodgy folk" would be out there on killing sprees yet, somehow, this hasn't happened. I suggest you look at the work of Professor Milton Diamond PhD of the University of Hawai'i who examined the situation in the USA and Japan where this material has been available for over 20 years and discovered "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"

Meanwhile Peter Sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper and Steve Wright the Ipswich Strangler who, between them killed 18 women, justifying their behavior because, according to their reading of the Bible, they were doing "God's work". In which case, it would make sense to ban the Bible because whilst banning so-called "extreme porn" might (unprovably) have saved one life, banning the Bible would have saved *eighteen* lives!

And why do you find it necessary to drag up the hoary old chestnut of "snuff movies"? Let me spell this out for you: Snuff Movies are a MYTH!! They do not exist! Despite thirty *years* of searching, the FBI, the British Police and others have never found *ONE* example of someone being murdered for the purposes of making a porn film, nor has anyone ever being charged with possessing one, let alone being convicted of making one!

If you want a logical debate, start by debating *facts* not myths and supposition and hearsay.

So let's take one fact from your little piece:

> Making people who encourage and participate in extreme acts which DO harm innocent victims accountable to some form of legal process? Good thing.

I agree, and so does everyone else in the BDSM community, I don't doubt.

Except that we already *HAVE* these laws! It's a crime to kill someone! It's a crime to commit an assault on another person (regrettably, it may even be a crime if they wish to consent to it after the Operation Spanner case)! It's a crime to falsely imprison someone!

We already have laws to deal with these crimes, this law will do nothing to change that situation, all it will do is to criminalise people for being (according to your lights) "a bit dodgy" because you don't like the pictures they look at.

Which is it to be...?

Sorry Graham, I need to clarify, I of course meant non-consentual application there...what consenting adults do in their own homes is entirely up to them....I did clarify that 'as long as no-one is harmed' meaning permanently so....I've known some lovely people who were into BDSM and talked quite openly about it, fair enough, not my hot beverage but nor my place to say what is right or wrong...

I was talking about kidnap/rape etc videos where it can be unclear as to whether these events are simulated or not....things of that nature, where, perhaps, consent as not given or required.

That's the kind of debate on the issue I meant to start mate...of course my facts are never going to be straight, hence debate

*applause*

It's not real. It's only pretend. Sometimes actors in films get killed, naked, etc etc for the purposes of the *STORY*. Anyway, don't the govt get a lot of revenue (i.e VAT) from the sales of porn?

I can just imagine it now. Big hoo ha about some film. Judge agrees with the defendant, throws the case out. Law fails and is never used again. The cost: several million taxpayer pounds.

...I got on my knees and thanked God I lived in a country where the first amendment protects me from the likes of this bill.

...PHil (US of A)

Thank you for your reply, at least you're willing to admit that you may be mistaken.

Unfortunately there are those, especially those who proposed and supported this law in Parliament and the Lords, who are completely unwilling to accept that they could, in any way, be wrong, and would not even listen to any arguments that perhaps their law would not achieve their aims, nor do they care that it will criminalise people for looking at "dangerous pictures".

It is, regrettably, way to late to debate this issue, in fact it was probably too late when the law was first proposed two years ago, it's pretty clear that the Labour Party was going to push this law through come hell or high water and any "concessions" were simply a sop to neutralise any opposition. Have a look at the Backlash and CAAN sites and you'll find all the information and if you think that this worthless law should be removed from the lawbooks before innocent people end up being hauled in front of the courts, write to your MP via http://www.writetothem.com

PS @Phil, unfortunately even your admirable First Amendment isn't necessarily going to protect you, when the Bush White House decided to "crack down" on "producers of sadistic porn" (at the same time as torturing prisoners in Guantanamo Bay) one producer said "While Intersec is certain that a potential prosecution would have no chance of success... the staff is unwilling to fight a lengthy and expensive court battle only to emerge victorious but bankrupt."

As the old saying has it "How much justice can you afford?"

One day - all photos will look like that.

Oh, and we have laws here to protect us from this kind of social abuse - problem is, no one dares taking the govUK to task over it.

...and in other news, "driving your car at 120 mph through a crowded city centre isn't speeding if you stop for a coffee afterwards"... think of the paedo's PLEEEEZE.

The author would like to point out that this is a sick joke that will likely be illegal in 2009 and has remained anonymous in case some mindless arse of a reactionist tw@ doesn't get it.

The author would also like to point out that enlightened people define "pornography" as "extreme (ie graphic) erotica" and that for some phukwits, even "erotica" is too extreme for their delicate sensibilities. The wedge starts here, cover your ankles you brazen hussy you.

we'll all be living in NuLabourCamps by 2012 so who gives a fuk?

Agree completely with your sentiments.

One of the most insulting aspects of this government's worst stupidities is the monstrous self-assurance of these fools.

I wish that every single one of them could have the following quote from Oliver Cromwell tatooed, mirror stylee, on their forheads:

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken!".

since i have uncensored copies of every Pedro Alamdovar film on dvd or vhs. Oh and A Clockwork orange as well! and some videos of me and the wife at Skin Two many years ago!

guess I'd better go and turn myself in then :)

(btw, well done Graham Marsden!)

wot, no "please won't someone think of the children!" icon yet?

As long as it's the judiciary making the call on what's obscene, we should be pretty safe (paragons of virtue that they are).

How long before it's an offense to bookmark sites containing anything obscene?

What about temporary internet files - are they illegal until your cache clears?

The only way this could work would be if they could monitor every internet connection in the country - oh, wait, that's on the cards too...