UK violent image laws

[icey]

^ lol ..congrats on your 69'er

regardless of what is in the picture, rest assured that it is not illegal to point a knife to your throat in order to get (or give) a sexual thrill: the crime is in having a photograph of it!

doing it is fine, unless there's an accident and you appear at a&e they can then report it if they have any concerns, although its unlikely they will, there has been the odd case.such as the spanner case.

'operation spanner'
background

The police had obtained a video which they believed depicted acts of sadistic torture, and they launched a murder investigation, convinced that the people in the video were being tortured before being killed. This resulted in raids on a number of properties, and a number of arrests.

The apparent "victims" were alive and well, and soon told the police that they were participating in private homosexual BDSM activities. Although all of those seen in the videos stated that they were willing participants in the activities depicted on the videos, the police and Crown Prosecution Service insisted on pressing charges. Sixteen men were charged with various offences, including "assault occasioning actual bodily harm" (ABH).

Heavily influenced by the nineteenth century boxing case of R v. Coney, the trial judge ruled that consent was not a valid defence to ABH, and the defendants pleaded guilty. The case was appealed first to the High Court, then to the House of Lords. In March 1993, the appeal was dismissed (R v Brown (1993) 2 All ER 75) by 3-2 majority of the Lords, with Lord Templeman in particular declaring that:

"In principle there is a difference between violence which is incidental and violence which is inflicted for the indulgence of cruelty. The violence of sadomasochistic encounters involves the indulgence of cruelty by sadists and the degradation of victims. Such violence is injurious to the participants and unpredictably dangerous. I am not prepared to invent a defence of consent for sadomasochistic encounters which breed and glorify cruelty [...]. Society is entitled and bound to protect itself against a cult of violence. Pleasure derived from the infliction of pain is an evil thing. Cruelty is uncivilized."
An attempt to overturn the convictions in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 failed (see Laskey, Jaggard and Brown v. United Kingdom).

The legal rationale for the decisions were broadly speaking as follows:



(UK courts) A person does not have the legal ability to consent to receive an act which will seriously harm them, such as branding or other intense activities of a sadomasochistic nature.

(European Courts) Whilst a person has a general right of free will, a state may as a matter of public policy restrict that in certain cases, for example for the general public good and for the protection of morals. The present case was judged by the European Court to have fallen within the sovereign scope of the UK Government's right to determine its legality, and human rights legislation would not overrule this.

That's my take on the law: I don't think icey agrees. I wonder if any English Law Lords are reading this thread who would like to comment?

ive looked and looked and all ive found is that the defences in the 'papers' i posted above are the only defences you can have, in this case its more a guilty until proven innocent than innocent until proven guilty and that was never the case before ..or at least not officially.. as you can see you have to 'prove' your innocence, though im certainly not a law expert in anyway and would love to hear from english law lord myelf as im not the smartest brick in the block when it comes to interpretation and relaying things lol, the explanation of it was given in a presentation/speech by representatives of backlash at a fetish fair/demos we attended, our barrister and looking around on the net, but i appreciate as with anything things can get misinterpreted ...by me especially and i hope they or i am wrong!