Possession of Violent Pornography Outlawed in UK

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC is reporting that possession of violent pornography is now punishable by three years in prison. This decision was handed down in response to a campaign waged by a grieving mother who lost her daughter to someone obsessed with violent pornography." From the article: "Shaun Gabb, director of the anti-censorship organization the Libertarian Alliance, said: 'If you are criminalizing possession then you are giving police inquisitorial powers to come into your house and see what you've got, now we didn't have this in the past.'"

Comments

Waterfall effect

[Anonymous Coward]

What about people who died as a result of watching TV shows, like Jackass? Movies, like.. plenty? Playing video games (GTA?)? How many people died by racing cars? This is ridiculous. Thank you for protecting me from myself dad.

simulated violence pornography saves lives

[SuperMario666]

Isn't it better for these weirdos to have safe outlet for these destructive fetishes? These simulated images do not create the fetish, they only provide an outlet for it. As a parent, I would rather these guys wanking in front of a PC in their parents' basements than strangling my daughter in some alley.

Admittedly, simulated images weren't enough for this guy, but he would have been killing much sooner if the internet hadn't sated his needs.

Re:simulated violence pornography saves lives

[Anubis350]

your point does bring up an interesting question about totally simulated digital scenes then. Not so much an issue now, but as digital recreations become more realistic....

Re:Total Crap

[eln]

David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) claimed the neighbor's dog told him to kill people. I think we should ban dogs.

Re:Disgusting

[Overzeetop]

But where do you stop?

Violent naughty pictures?
Naughty pictures?
Violent pictures?
Violent pames?
Violent movies? (Everybody liked Saw, right?)
Violent sports (UFC, WWF)?
All contact sports?

How about in the non-content arena?
Alcohol?
Caffeine?
Cars with HP to exceed 75MPH or torque to better than 0-60/8sec?

Re:Disgusting

[aztektum]

My guess is, if you go back far enough, before they even got to the violent porn they were probably raised by shitty parents or they have a real mental defect. This ends up being merely and outlet for their fucked up behavior.

I however am not a head doctor. This has just been my experience in the world at large with people I've met. YMMV

Re:Disgusting

[sTalking_Goat]

That's exactly it. Consenting adults demean and beat each other senseless all the time, and no one is killed or maimed. This has nothing to do with violent sex or violent porn. It has to do with self-control and clearly defining the line and never crossing it.

Why should my rights be infringed because a small minority can't tell where fantasy ends?

Re:Cause-and-Effect

[russ1337]

You give a link to the Miller test. The Miller test is based on the "average person" finding something prurient/dodgy/racey.. The only problem is, the "average person" is kept in an evacuated glass case in France.... So I'm thinking they are fairly busy.

But seriously, what is considered violent?
A light spanking? (everyone likes a little spank dont they?)
Hair pulling?
Nipple clamps or pegs?
Strange Insertions?


One mans violence is another mans foreplay.....

Im not about to let any copper decide what is dodgy... and I'm off to erase my hard drive, anyone got any good, free, government strength data destruction S/W???

What about a donkey punch....?

Re:Disgusting

[cayenne8]

"How is possession of images a way of "advocating" anything? That would apply more to making or distributing the images, but that is already illegal and not affected by this law, so not really relevant at all."

To play devil's advocate, child porn possession is HIGHLY illegal. By your definition, possession of it is not advocating anything and should not be illegal? What's the difference (just speaking to possession here, not creation).

Double devils....what if the images of either are computer generated...no humans involved at all...no humans harmed. What would the rules be for creation and posession of those images?

Re:Does pornography increase incidents of rape?

[maynard]

Nice strawman. Not all porn uses rape play acting. A better question would be "does porn increase promiscuity?"

Well then, have another study which looks at the increase in porn availability in Japan and contrasts that with the crime rate. Same conclusion.

"The most dramatic decrease in sex crimes was seen when attention was focused on the number and age of rapists and victims among younger groups (Table 2). We hypothesized that the increase in pornography, without age restriction and in comics, if it had any detrimental effect, would most negatively influence younger individuals. Just the opposite occurred. The number of juvenile offenders dramatically dropped every period reviewed from 1,803 perpetrators in 1972 to a low of 264 in 1995; a drop of some 85% (Table 1). The number of victims also decreased particularly among the females younger than 13 (Table 2). In 1972, 8.3% of the victims were younger than 13. In 1995 the percentage of victims younger than 13 years of age dropped to 4.0%."

Now, as to your assertion that these studies are "strawmen" arguments, would you please explain this assertion rather than just claiming it so? I don't see the strawman you allege. Next, how do you plan to gage an increase or decrease in promiscuity? Would that be by survey? If so, then good luck getting accurate data (you'll need it).

Re:Ah brilliant

[Grishnakh]

Yep, not only are pit bull attacks commonplace in the news, but I had a neighbor recently whose pit bull escaped three times: in the first escape, he nearly bit my wife, and I fired my shotgun to scare him off. For my action in preventing a dog bite, one of my other neighbors complained to the HOA and I got a nastygram about not discharging a firearm within city limits. I tried to explain the situation, but they didn't care. Later, in talking with police, we were informed that shooting the dog would have gotten us in trouble for animal cruelty (?!).

This gets better: The dog escaped again a month or so later, and bit the neighbor who had complained about my shotgun incident. Karma's a bitch, huh? She's since moved to another city.

The dog escaped yet again, and bit another neighbor on the rear, causing her to miss 5 weeks of work and have a serious infection.

Throughout all this, the police never bothered to do anything about the dog because by the time they came around, the owner had locked it up again. The badly injured neighbor looked into a lawsuit, but decided against it because the dog's owner was a renter, had no assets, and operated a cash business. We tried to get her to go with us to the Courthouse and file a complaint to have the dog euthanized, but she backed out because she was afraid of retaliation.

I'm all for exterminating pit bulls. We should do it the way they recently exterminated thousands of dogs in a Chinese province: send out teams to hunt them down in people's yards, or grab them when people are walking them, and then hack them to death with machetes while their owners watch. Honestly, those Chinese really have some cool ways of dealing with problems. The thing about executing people and billing their families for the bullet is just classic.

Anyway, as for this OP's comments, banning pit bulls is nothing like banning all dogs in NYC because of the Son of Sam. Pit bulls have established a spectacular record for attacking and maiming and killing people. The Son of Sam claimed to have been told by his dog to kill people. Anyone who can't see a difference there belongs in a mental institution, unless someone can find me a talking dog.

You don't understand the logic.

[raehl]

Nobody expects the guy to NOT look at violent porn. He's sick. He can't help himself. He *HAS* to look at it.

So, if you make it illegal, the people who are not sick will stop looking at it. Then anybody still looking at it must be a sick person, so you know to arrest them, and you arrest them BEFORE they kill anyone, thus saving lives.

Same philosphy behind gun control - pro-gun lobby often responds to gun control with the argument that "If oyu make guns illegal, only criminals will have guns!" Which is exactly the point - if guns are legal, you can't tell teh difference between a law-abiding firearm owner and a criminal with a gun. If guns are illegal, you just have to arrest everyone with a gun and you get most of the criminals in prison before they manage to commit more serious crime.

At least, that's the way it's supposed to work.

Re:You don't understand the logic.

[Anonymous Coward]

"those spikes that environmentalists drive into trees in order to decapitate the people who are paid to cut them down"

Uh, that doesn't happen. Its very rare for a person to be cutting down a tree using a chainsaw in industrial logging, huge machines are used. The goal is simply to fuck up the machine, thus costing more in repairs than the tree is worth. There have been no deaths, and only one recorded incident of serious injury as a result of tree spiking. George Alexander was maimed in a mill, when the blade in a saw shattered. However this happens occasionally anyways, which is why safety laws (which were not obeyed) are in place to ensure shattered blades are contained and don't hurt people. Also, the person spiking the tree was not an environmentalist, it was just a guy spiking the trees on his property because loggers were stealing them.

Usual "New Labour" reaction

[TractorBarry]

I'm not sure where I got this quote from (possibly even a /. post !) but it sums this up quite nicely:

"New Labour see a problem and a headline - then address the headline".

This is such a bad bill it's hardly worth discussing. They might as well make it illegal to own war films (very, very violent and displaying a definite lust for death - You could make a very good case for labelling then as violent pornography)

As in every instance where a twisted individual has forcibly projected their inner sickness onto an innocent third party I have every sympathy for the victim and their family. But this sort of knee jerk legislation will achieve nothing. It will not make anyone safer and it will not prevent further such murders.

So the obvious question is exactly how will "violent pornography" be defined ? From my (very, very) limited watching of current UK TV I suspect that you could class quite a bit of the current output as violent pornography - especially the utter crap put out under the moniker of "soap operas" which seem to feature nothing but fucking and fighting.

Oh well, maybe I suppose I'd best get up early tomorrow so I can take my DVD copy of "Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!" down to the local cop shop to check up on its legal status... :)

There is no such thing as consent in the UK anyway

[Matterball]

If you happen to have violent, spanky, whips and chains sex and you happen to leave a bruise or a cut or anything more than "transient and trifling" you can't say that you consented to it. So if you need to go to the doctor after a heavy session, he may call the police and your partner in the act can be jailed for actual bodily harm. The fact that you consented to get beaten up is no defence. And now they want to make it illegal to even watch two people beating each other up for their own gratification. This, in a country that has a long history of caning and other such fetishy acts - do a search for "English punishment" and see what comes up. Tabloid media, and idiots. Same as usual. Are they now going to ban sales of canes and whips and other toys designed to inflict pain on people for sexual gratification? Sooner or later, someone's going to commit a crime and they'll find a pair of fluffy handcuffs and outlaw those as well. Arrrgh!