"Violent" pornography is now banned

[Dr Lobster*]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berk ... 297600.stm

now whilst i myself have no specific interest in 'violent' pornography (more grannies and lactating fatties) i wonder why this specific type of pornography has been banned - it seems very spurious to me.

without a doubt the particular case above is an unpleasent and needless tragedy, but i question the merits of 'banning' such material. i've done a search on google and i can't find any other deaths which specifically link violence and pornography (i admit it wasn't a finger tip search through every link).

but nevertheless many more people die needlessly each year through alcohol abuse, road traffic accidents and by accidents in the home.

i do wonder why the government seems to tackling these sorts of things, which even if you accept there is a link between watching some violent porn and then wanting to carry out those fantasies by any measure account for a tiny, minute percentage of crimes out there and in which case, you might as well start banning 'violent' files, music etc etc which get much more saturation in the market place and reach many more people.

i just don't believe that banning everything and anything that *could* possibly cause somebody to comit a crime is really the answer. i wonder if labour stay in power instead of having gun and knife amnesties, we'll have an 'urban music amnestry' where you can hand all your old tapes into padded basket outside your local police station?

[marksi]

The Home Office has admitted in the document issued today that it has found no link between "violent" pornography and sexual crime, so quite why we need new legislation rather escapes me.

Section 12 is unarguably fair enough (you'd have thought it illegal already), but from that point it all starts to become complicated. I get the idea that some poor civil servant had to try and come up with a form of words that made sense, and failed, mainly because it is impossible to cover precisely what it is intended to. Whether or not any act was consenusal appears to have been ignored as a test of whether it is legal or not.

From the Home Office release:

12. The material covered by the offence would be:
(i) intercourse or oral sex with an animal; and
(ii) sexual interference with a human corpse, as proposed in the consultation
document. We have considered the point raised by some respondents that
these categories do not exactly mirror the criminal offences set out in the
Sexual Offences Act 2003, which refer to penetration, but have concluded
that the broader categories should remain.

13. We have reconsidered the remaining categories set out in the consultation:
(i) serious violence in a sexual context, and
(ii) serious sexual violence.
We have concluded that the reference to “in a sexual context” caused confusion and was unnecessary in view of the pornography threshold described above. We therefore propose a single category of serious violence.

14. We have considered the violence threshold, which was originally proposed at GBH level, and concluded that the test was not sufficiently precise, would be difficult to apply and would draw in material which would not pass the obscenity threshold. We have concluded that the offence should apply to images of acts that appear to be life threatening or are likely to result in serious, disabling injury. Again, it would be for the prosecution to show that the material fell into this category. We would consider giving non-statutory guidance on the type of injury which we consider would fall within this category.

15. In summary, material would need to be:
(a) pornographic
(b) explicit
(c) real or appears to be real act (these would be objective tests for the jury)

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/ ... iew=Binary

[James H]

One of the problems is that porno sites seem to be foreign usually. Take a browse at "imgsrc.ru" and you'll see what I mean... it doesn't make for nice viewing.

I don't have a problem with porn, but when it's that kind... it turns my stomach completely.

[marksi]

This proposed law is aimed at individuals who download it to their home PCs (which is presumably the same thing as viewing it given it has to download to a machine to be viewed) rather than to ISPs and hosts.

Here's a QC's opinion of the proposed legislation.

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

He believes it is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

Also worth pointing out is that this legisation is proposed, based on there being sufficient parliamentary time, which is another way of saying "if we get round to it", so it's entirely possible this will never actually become law.

[James H]

I've always wondered how the government finds out which people have been downloading what. Do they have a programme which hacks into peoples' computers?

[marksi]

I've always wondered how the government finds out which people have been downloading what. Do they have a programme which hacks into peoples' computers?

Your ISP will have a record of all the sites you visit for so many days, though I would think they'd only be checking what you were looking at if asked to by the authorities who'd have been alerted by some other activity.

One way they find many paedophiles is by raiding a child porn website's offices and taking the credit card details of all the people who've paid for the porn. There's little doubt that anyone could have accidentally *paid" for porn using their own card - though it could be argued they'd just stumbled onto a site, or that it was someone else using their PC - so in that sense they have a virtually watertight case.

[marksi]

Interesting blog on the subject from the editor of the 10 O'Clock News:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/i ... ml#a003979