Oh dear... (merged)

[Lion]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7364475.stm

I'm not sure about Britian, but in Canada and US, we have live pay per view events of UFC, which is some fighting compitition where two men essentially beat each other to pulp.

Hollywood produces several movies a year that glorify violence, or simply shows it because it's integral to the plot.

And while I think stuff like child pornography is disgusting and should have laws against it, I fear that this one, with all it's good intent, well affect the private lives of two (or maybe more) consenting citizens looking to have a good time.

The snuff stuff, I have no issues with, but it seems to me atleast that this law tries to outlaw a whole lot of safe bdsm activities.

[Warbaby1943]

Too many do-gooders and stupid laws in this world today. While I'm on my soapbox I may as well say we need a hell of a lot less lawyers too.

[gemmy]

Just more people with nothing better to do and sadly they are the ones that are heard because the ones listening just want to shut the nosey bizzy bodies up!

[annie]

Guess my question is... what is "extreme?" After all my version of extreme and someone else's may vary greatly!

[Warbaby1943]

Guess my question is... what is "extreme?" After all my version of extreme and someone else's may vary greatly!

Problem in cases like this yours or my opinion won't matter in the least.

[icey]

thats one of the main the problems and where they are going to catch people with loop holes annie

as it stands this law states 'extreme' violent images

an act which threatens a person’s life.

an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,

any red marks,cuts welts, bruising, any activities which may possibly cause said 'injuries' or any activities which appear realistic, are considered extreme violent images

so that basically rules out any spanking pics/vids ,flogging ,knife play, rape scenes,bondage.... well everything except missionary type stuff lol

[Logic1]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7364475.stm


By Chris Summers
BBC News

A bill outlawing the possession of "extreme pornography" is set to become law next week. But many fear it has been rushed through and will criminalise innocent people with a harmless taste for unconventional sex.

Five years ago Jane Longhurst, a teacher from Brighton, was murdered. It later emerged her killer had been compulsively accessing websites such as Club Dead and Rape Action, which contained images of women being abused and violated.

When Graham Coutts was jailed for life Jane Longhurst's mother, Liz, began a campaign to ban the possession of such images.

Supported by her local MP, Martin Salter, she found a listening ear in then home secretary, David Blunkett, who agreed to introduce legislation to ban the possession of "violent and extreme pornography".

This was eventually included in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which gets its final reading this week and will get Royal Assent on 8 May.

Until now pornographers, rather than consumers, have needed to operate within the confines of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act (OPA). While this law will remain, the new act is designed to reflect the realities of the internet age, when pornographic images may be hosted on websites outside the UK.

Under the new rules, criminal responsibility shifts from the producer - who is responsible under the OPA - to the consumer.

But campaigners say the new law risks criminalising thousands of people who use violent pornographic images as part of consensual sexual relationships.

People like Helen, who by day works in an office in the Midlands, and enjoys being sexually submissive and occasionally watching pornography, portrayed by actors, which could be banned under the new legislation.
She feels the new law is an over-reaction to the Longhurst case.

"Mrs Longhurst sees this man having done this to her daughter and she wants something to blame and rather than blame this psychotic man she wants to change the law but she doesn't really understand the situation," says Helen.

"Do you ban alcohol just because some people are alcoholics?"

She has an ally in Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer, a Liberal Democrat peer who has fought to have the legislation amended.

"Obviously anything that leads to violence against women has to be taken very seriously," says Baroness Miller. "But you have to be very careful about the definition of 'extreme pornography' and they have not nearly been careful enough."

She has suggested the new act adopt the legal test set out in the OPA, which bans images which "tend to deprave and corrupt".

But the government has sought to broaden the definition and the bill includes phrases such as "an act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life".

Speaking from her home in Berkshire, Mrs Longhurst acknowledges that libertarians see her as "a horrible killjoy".

"I'm not. I do not approve of this stuff but there is room for all sorts of different people. But anything which is going to cause damage to other people needs to be stopped."

To those who fear the legislation might criminalise people who use violent pornography as a harmless sex aid, she responds with a blunt "hard luck".

"There is no reason for this stuff. I can't see why people need to see it. People say what about our human rights but where are Jane's human rights?"

Recently, the much-publicised rompings of Formula 1 boss Max Mosley have served as a reminder that kinky sex is found in all walks of society.

And just as Mr Mosley is fighting the expose of his antics, calling it an invasion of private life, so Baroness Miller says the new law also threatens people's privacy.

"The government is effectively walking into people's bedrooms and saying you can't do this. It's a form of thought police."

She says there's a danger of "criminalising kinkiness" and fears the legislation has been rushed through Parliament without proper debate because it is a small part of a wider bill.

Deborah Hyde, of Backlash, an umbrella group of anti-censorship and alternative sexuality pressure groups, has similar concerns.

"How many tens or hundreds or thousands of people are going to be dragged into a police station, have their homes turned upside down, their computers stolen and their neighbours suspecting them of all sorts?"

Such "victims" won't feel able to fight the case and "will take a caution, before there are enough test cases to prove that this law is unnecessary and unworkable".

Another opponent of the new law is Edward Garnier, an MP and part-time judge, who questioned the clause when it was debated in the Commons.

My primary concern is the vagueness of the offence," says Mr Garnier. "It was very subjective and it would not be clear to me how anybody would know if an offence had been committed."

But the Ministry of Justice is unrepentant, saying the sort of images it is seeking to outlaw are out of place in modern-day Britain.

"Pornographic material which depicts necrophilia, bestiality or violence that is life threatening or likely to result in serious injury to the anus, breasts or genitals has no place in a modern society and should not be tolerated," says a spokeswoman for the ministry.

Yet opponents have also seized on what they see as an anomaly in the new law, noted by Lord Wallace of Tankerness during last week's debate in the House of Lords.

"If no sexual offence is being committed it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offence for having an image of something which was not an offence," he said.

With that partly in mind, the government is tabling an amendment that would allow couples to keep pictures of themselves engaged in consensual acts - but not to distribute them. Lord Hunt, who has charge of the bill in the Lords, admits it is being rushed through to meet a deadline. But he denies the law has not been thoroughly considered and maintains it will only affect images that are "grossly offensive and disgusting".



sooo..
One wonders what pictures of spankings and things like that is considered. Is it violent?
Stories or other bdsm porn?
where is the line gonna be drawn?

[Alex Bragi]

It's crazy really isn't it. When it come to entertainment, we accept violence of almost any kind, yet when you add sex, it become a whole new issue.

"Do you ban alcohol just because some people are alcoholics?" (Helen) Absolutely right on the mark.

[gagged_Louise]

What an outrageous law. Should be obvious to anyone in five minutes that this kind of law, if it's enforced with any strength, or even if it's used at random when there are clues leading to track down this kind of 'possession of sexually violent stuff' in a case that's to do with some other suspected crime (e.g. fraud, bootlegging, assault, political activities - that last one is becoming a kind of grey zone already in the eyes of the law) is a grave stab at people's privacy.

Besides /thanks Alex!) many films and tv series today contain more brutal violence that many supposedly hard-porn films do - how about Die Hard with a Vengeance? - but hey, that's just violence, not sex. ~gasps~

[Logic1]

Lion beat me to it

[jeanne]

Wow. Once again the moral, upright citizens are going to pass a law to save us from depraved individuals - and not coincidentally, ourselves. I can't begin to express my gratitude that Big Brother and Big Sister are watching out for me.

Grrr.

[gagged_Louise]

Yet opponents have also seized on what they see as an anomaly in the new law, noted by Lord Wallace of Tankerness during last week's debate in the House of Lords.

"If no sexual offence is being committed it seems very odd indeed that there should be an offence for having an image of something which was not an offence," he said.

Exactly! That one shows how ill-adviced the build of this proposed new law really is. It's no business of the state if someone enjoys getting tied up, whipped and abused in a consensual way, so how could possessing pictures of just that be a general crime? And much of what they call "porn" is consensually produced - not all of it, but it's simply not legally useful to try to determine for every case of a film or photo (or even a manga comic!): was this done consensually or was there some sort of compulsion. This law is straight out of the prude, tidy fifties.


Only yesterday i read a review of a book on masculine roles, porn and violence in a tabloid here: in picking up on the analysis of the book, the reviewer used the name of the site fuckingmachines.com, that runs a banner on the top of this page, as an image of the degraded "slave woman matrix" which a bankrupt male role supposedly needs to feel at ease. In violent porn, the woman is a machine to be fucked, and this hunter/prey, mind/body pair of roles stretches far beyonfd the people who actually watch such films, period. That kind of glib interpreation politicizes all kinds of sex images and sex relations (fantasies and bedroom practices alike) and demands vanilla as the only politically correct and humanitarian thing. Yeah, right...

[TomOfSweden]

I'm not sure about Britian, but in Canada and US, we have live pay per view events of UFC, which is some fighting compitition where two men essentially beat each other to pulp.

Hollywood produces several movies a year that glorify violence, or simply shows it because it's integral to the plot.

Stop picking on movie violence people.

UFC is about strategy and comparing styles. I'm guessing all you see is the violence because you know jack shit about martial arts. Am I right?

And on the Hollywood one.... We all know it hurts when we get punched, or even just prick our fingers. That will never change no matter how many Hollywood movies are made glorifying it. It's not the glorification of violence that is the problem. It's the glorification of war! Which I argue is a completely different issue. I still don't think we should make laws about it either... but let's complain about the right stuff.

Pain hurts and is something we can all identify with. That's why violence features so much in media. It's one of the easiest way to engage the viewer emotionally. If people started paying for movies with smarter plots... we might rid ourselves of these types of films. But movie-goers obviously mostly just want to turn their brains off for a bit. Immerse themselves in emotions catering to a 4 year old. It's really nothing to get worked up about.

To the topic at hand. All these moralistic laws are only about the same thing. Politicians want to appear as morally upright and pick political battles that are easily won. Since sex is a taboo issue to be positive about it's hard to find eloquent defenders... so these laws can pass even though 99% of all voters think it's absurd. All politicians realize that it still would be political suicide to oppose it so they pick some other battle that's easier to win. so these kinds of laws linger until decades after they're obsolete.

Sweden had an anti-porn vote up against this. Nobody spoke up for porn. Everybody who voiced any opinion was against porn, the law still didn't pass. The silent majority had spoken. But we have the exact same laws against violent porn. I've got enough BDSM porn on my computer to land me in jail for years.

This is a major problem of democracy, which I don't think is related to sex. Every election always has these bullshit issues which only is about taking peoples attention away from economic issues which are:

1) hard to understand
2) emotionally boring

But we should speak out about this at every opportunity... if we're able. This isn't only an issue for politicians. They listen to voters. It's the popular opinion winds that rule a democracy. Just speak up!

[fetishdj]

I think the references to violence in movies and so on only serve to illustrate the ludicracy of the law since by a strict reading and definition of the wording of the law the majority of hollywod films are also illegal under several of the definitions.

To demonstrate:

Taken from http://serpentstar.livejournal.com/222217.html as found in my trawl of the web...

The new law will criminalise possession of "extreme pornography", defined as anything depicting:


1) An act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life
2) An act which results in or appears to result in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals
3) An act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse
4) A person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal

So, as far as I can see, (1) rules out almost all thrillers & action movies, pornographic or not.

(2) rules out quite a lot of thrillers & action movies, too -- any time a woman gets shot in the chest, or anyone gets shot in the groin or arse. Any serious productions of Chaucer are going to be right out.

(3) rules out some great (if unusual, and not especially pornographic) films, such as "Street Trash", "Re-Animator", most vampire movies (including the 60s Hammer ones), "Clerks", "Kissed", and the awesome "Dellamorte Dellamore".

(4) rules out "Clerks 2" (what is it that New Labour has against Kevin Smith?!?).

Though I would argue that the Clerks example is not valid as it is implied necrophillia - they never actually show the act.

[gagged_Louise]

I agree fetishdj. Movies such as Basic Instinct, Kill Bill, Robin Hood- Prince of Thieves or the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard series would appear gravely immoral and illegal if the thinking behind this law was applied with a little more strict logic. Not that I think Die Hard 2 or the Costner Robin Hood are great movie masterpieces, but it would be quite wrong to go outlawing them on moral grounds.