UK Proposal To Restrict Internet Pornography Sparks Row

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on the row over proposals by the UK Government to criminalize possession of 'extreme' porn. The bill, published last week, would include the prohibition of fictional depictions of violence and images of acts between consenting adults. The law would also apply to screenshots taken from a legal film, if the screenshot was made for erotic purposes. The goal is to prevent disturbed individuals from accessing content online that would trigger violent behavior. From the article: 'Labour MP Martin Salter, who has worked closely ... in pushing the legislation, rejected the BDSM community's claims their civil liberties were being undermined. He said: "No-one is stopping people doing weird stuff to each other but they would be strongly advised not to put it on the internet. At the end of the day it is all too easy for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind."' The bill follows from plans initially announced last August."

Comments

Prehaps instead..

[Tainek]

Prehaps it would be smarter to spend resources finding and providing care for unbalanced people, rather than banning anything (which means pretty much everything) that sets them off, No?

slippery slope here, very slippery

Re:Prehaps instead..

[JordanL]

It's very easy to pick on the BDSM community... they aren't what you would call the most upstanding citizenry in most people's minds... but isn't that kinda the point?

A real free society cares about the rights of the people they don't like too.

Re:Prehaps instead..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very easy to pick on the BDSM community

How true. They are always getting beaten, whipped and slapped around.

Re:Prehaps instead..

[mdwh2]

Talking of rights, it's interesting to note that the bill states "these clauses constitute an interference" with the European Convention on Human Rights.

But it's interesting, shall we say, to see what justifications it gives for doing so ( http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/ cmbills/130/en/07130x-n.htm#index_link_206 ):

802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

803. The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people. It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence, so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place. The House of Lords upheld convictions for offences of causing actual and grievous bodily harm in the case of Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 which involved a group of sado-masochists who had engaged in consensual torture. The threshold that the clauses have set is very high, so while those taking part might argue that they had consented to it, such consent is not valid at law.

804. In the case of images of staged activity , the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities. This is also the case with images of bestiality, which while involving harm to animals can also involve the non-consensual participation of humans who are harmed in the process of making the images.

805. The Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material, which may be harmful to those who view it. Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is acceptable.

806. The Government considers that the restrictions on this material also achieve the aim of protecting others, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from inadvertently coming into possession of this material, which is widespread on the internet.

Re:Prehaps instead..

[Razed By TV]

Interesting you should bring that up, as in 1994 a conservative MP died from auto-erotic asphyxiation, combined with self-bondage and cross-dressing. How do you die from crossdressing? ... "These heels are killing me!"?

Re:Prehaps instead..

[UncleTogie]

ok thats fine but keep it in YOUR bedroom, not on the internet...

Do you have the Playboy Channel? I sure don't, but it was an option when I signed up for cable. I didn't want to see it, so I didn't GET it added. I'm not sure who's forcing you to browse hard-core XXX sites, but I'd take this issue up with them. If, in fact, you do NOT have someone forcing you to view this material, then why do you keep looking for it? I don't care for racism, so I don't troll racist message boards. I don't believe I'd care for dead-puppy-humping. Go figure, I never visit dead-puppy-humping sites.

Let me ask you this: What qualifications or basis do you have to make the "best" moral judgements for everyone else? I'm rather curious.

no offense if you have to pretend to rape your wife to keep her hot I dunno.

I think the last two words of that quote sum it up wonderfully. You don't understand it, so it MUST be bad for everyone ELSE. I don't understand it either. Doesn't mean I have the right to make that moral call for everyone around me....{side note, if you'd read my post, you'd see that neither my fiance nor I have engaged in this particular play style.}

You may want to think on that one for a little bit. At least one of us will be thinking about it....

btw your analogy on mental health really shows only one thing which is your ignorance on the matter.
This one was rich... While I've not had any partners ask for the "rape" scenario, I've had quite a few girlfriends get quite creative as far as fantasies go. I'm familiar with the material. As I've also had around 10 years experience in the psychiatric field, I'm quite content in keeping the analogy. You believe it's the wrong analogy? Fine. Show you're less "ignorant" than I am on the source material. Give us a more relevant analogy.

Next..

[cayenne8]

....next I hear they are going to ban the showing of OLD Looney Tunes.

Some unbalanced person might be pushed over the edge, and start dropping anvils on people heads.

Parliament News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal is to prevent disturbed individuals from accessing content online that would trigger violent behavior.

The BBC can no longer cover the actions of Parliament or the PM?

At the end of the day...

[Anonymous Coward]

"At the end of the day it is all too easy for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind."

Really? Can I see some peer-reviewed research papers showing such a link? (Seriously, I don't know either way - let's see what scientists say, not politicians.)

Labour MP Martin Salter

[sehlat]

At the end of the day it is all too easy for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind. Is the gentleman speaking from personal experience?

But the problem is over THERE

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

The problem is not that an imbalanced mind sees extreme porn. The problem is that the mind in question is imbalanced. Denying all minds access to extreme porn will not solve the problem...the mind in question will still be imbalanced.

And the mind in question will still be likely to cause harm.

All this law will do is create another subjective standard by which some people can be arbitrarily criminalized.

Re:But the problem is over THERE

[NMerriam]

People need some form of entertainment. Or, perhaps more accurately, a society benefits if its people are entertained. Whereas no person or society needs pornography except for the aforementioned unbalanced people.

And some people's chosen form of entertainment is pornography. You've somehow convinced yourself that only "unbalanced" people enjoy pornography, but I know of no scientific study that indicates it is anything more than just another form of entertainment that many perfectly healthy adults enjoy watching. Most surveys since the VHS days indicate that the majority of the population in western countries has viewed pornography at one point or another, and a significant fraction of the population views it on a regular basis.

There's no indication that those huge numbers of people have become molesters or otherwise scarred by their exposure. Indeed, sex crimes in the US have declined greatly as the internet became more available, which brought pornography into many homes on a dramatically more frequent and extreme basis. If pornography led to criminal behavior in healthy individuals, we should be in the middle of the most horrific crime spree of sexual assaults in the history of mankind.

The main "damage" that psychologists have found with some pornography viewers is that pornography can set up unrealistic expectations, both for what sex "should" be like and what physical ideals and -- a criticism that is similarly offered for most forms of recorded entertainment, where actors and actresses are unrealistically attractive and their lives generally are much more interesting and exciting than the average viewers'.

You sounds bit like a headmaster circa 1900, when masturbation was considered to be a horrible act children should be beaten for experimenting with. It was widely "known" at the time that masturbation led to criminal behavior, insanity, and sexual deviancy. Of course the same charges were leveled against homosexuality and every other form of sex that is outside "missionary position in marriage for procreation under the covers with the lights out". Of course there's no evidence whatsoever for such claims other than mere belief by those who espouse them.

Re:Row?

[SomeJoel]

It's a British word for "fight". They couldn't use the word fight because it has violent undertones which could send an unbalanced mind over the edge.

Ahem.

[Khaed]

I'm going to get moderated to all hell for this, but I don't care: After arguing in three or four threads in the last few weeks about how "it's not just the US" doing things like this, I'd just like to say a few words:

I TOLD YOU SO.

Politicians the world over love this do-nothing regulation of the things that "offend" their poor widdle voters and their sensibilities. "Violent porn? How dare they!" What's next, scat? Then what, facials, because they're degrading and might encourage men to treat women like objects? Yes, this is a slippery slope argument, but the reason cited was that these sorts of things trigger unbalanced minds. I could care less about violent porn, it's not my bag. I've been hearing for decades that porn causes rape: Apply the argument against violent porn to regular porn, and it won't be long before some bright MP suggests banning all internet porn because it might trigger someone to rape.

Which is a load of bollocks, because if everyone who looked at porn committed a rape, well... all of slashdot's readers would be making license plates right now and desperately clinging to the soap.

If someone is bent enough that seeing images is going to cause them to act on their fantasies, why is it only violent porn that will trigger them? What about violent media in general? Whose to say they won't catch an episode of the BBC's Spooks and act on the Plot of the Week? There are always going to be loons out there and we can't really effectively ban everything that might set them off without turning the world into a very damn boring place. They also make up a small percent of the population, so why are we going to let them ruin things for everyone else?

Oh really?

[DreamingReal]

At the end of the day it is all too easy for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind.

I guess that means the Bible, Torah, and Koran are next.

what

[Desullen]

There goes 4chan

Did anyone else read the bill?

[Odiumjunkie]

(7) In this section "image" means-- (a) a moving or still image (produced by any means); or 25 (b) data (stored by any means) which is capable of conversion into an image within paragraph (a).

Maybe this is just one of those WTFs brough about because IANAL, but seriously - any data which is capable of conversion into an extreme image?

Who wants to be the first to convert the text of the bill into an ASCII goatse?

Light relief (ooer)

[MythMoth]

I used to know a masochist who liked to have a cold shower every morning.

So he had a hot one instead.

Re:To drag it back on topic, though

[grahammarsden]

> IIRC what got the brits with their panties in a knot about extreme porn, was a case where one deranged guy watched a bunch of snuff movies, then went and strangled a woman to death.

No, that is what those who propose this law *want* you to believe.

Some facts:

1) SNUFF MOVIES ARE A MYTH!

Excuse me shouting, but in 30 years of searching by police agencies worldwide there has never been a *single* "snuff movie" found (someone being murdered for sexual gratification and then the film being sold or distributed), let alone anyone being prosecuted for it!

2) He looked at sites like "Necrobabes" and "Hanging Bitches" which are *staged* porn sites with actors posing for photos. Nobody is killed in these any more than people are killed in films like Saw or Hostel or Captivity!

3) Martin Salter MP, the guy who is pushing this law, has a clear anti-porn agenda. He has just been quoted as saying "No-one is stopping people doing weird stuff to each other but they would be strongly advised not to put it on the internet" he has also repeated the myth about Snuff Movies and claimed that "it is all too easy for this stuff to trigger an unbalanced mind" even though the original Government Consultation admitted that there was *NO* evidence that images such as this caused harm!

> I fail to see what good it does to provide movies for _that_ deranged minority.

You have this argument backwards. What you fail to see is that *NO* good will come from attempting to block imagery like this *in the hope* that it will somehow stop a "deranged minority" hurting others.

Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper" murdered prostitutes and justified it by his reading of the Bible. Should the Bible therefore be banned because it stimulates a "deranged minority" to murder??

> I'll say they're messed up in the head as it is. With or without movies, that's a disturbingly unbalanced person who gets an erection at the thought of taking a life.

Exactly, see above. These people will find justifications by one means or another. Criminalising the rest of us is not going to make a difference.