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British Video Recordings Act 1984 Invalid
chrb writes "BBC News is reporting that the British Video Recordings Act 1984 is invalid due to a 25 year old legal blunder. The Thatcher government of the day failed to officially "notify" the European Commission about the law, and hence it no longer stands as a legal Act. There will now be a period of around three months before the Act can be passed again, during which time it will be entirely legal to sell any video content without age-rated certifications."
"Our legal advice is that those previously prosecuted will be unable to overturn their prosecution or receive financial recompense," she said.
So people who were previously prosecuted for breaking a non-law will be unable to overturn their prosecution.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
IANA(British)L, but here's the gist:
The UK joined the EEC in 1973. Council Directive 83/189/EEC was passed in March 1983. It says that if a country passes "standards" it has to notify other countries.
See, the EEC (now the EU) is designed to allow freer trade between countries. You can't do that if you're implementing standards that you're not telling other people about. It makes for a "gotcha" situation: "Hey, you didn't follow the standard, and we're going to prosecute you under our laws, even though you followed all the rules you knew about."
Therefore all convictions since 1984 should be nullified, since the law itself is voided by the treaty.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
British movie/game ratings are pretty simple.
There is:
U - Universal - suitable for all
PG - Parental Guidance
12/12A - for videos, nobody under age 12 is allowed to purchase it. for movies shown in a cinema, under twelves can watch it if they are accompanied by an adult.
15 - suitable for 15+
18 - suitable for 18+
R18 - Restricted 18 - basically porn. Can only be shown in specially licensed venues and sold only in licensed sex shops.
'E' is on some videos. It's not actually a rating, but it's just a symbol put on by video producers to specify that the film is exempt from rating. Things like videos of sports matches, musical performances, educational videos don't get rated. Most imported videos
The BBFC also now produce some text that accompanies the rating symbol which broadly gives the reason why the film is rated that way. For instance, it might say "Contains frequent strong bloody violence and very strong language" next to an 18 certificate.
They introduced R18 a few years ago when they realised that hardcore porn was mostly being circulated through the black market and by people distributing copied tapes. Of course, now, we have the new rules on "violent and extreme" pornography which actually makes it a crime to possess pornography that depicts violent scenarios - rape fantasies, that kind of stuff. With one hand, the government make porn a bit more legal, and with the other hand, they've created a new black market that the Internet supplies.
The BBFC is generally, imo, pretty fair - I mean, as fair as a bunch of censoring, free-speech-restricting thugs can be. Perhaps it's just bias living here, but BBFC seem to get it right a lot more often than the MPAA ratings do, and they are a hell of a lot less squeamish about depiction of sex and nudity - they make a distinction for 'natural nudity' where it's non-sexual, so we don't have idiotic philistines sticking big blocky pixels over Dürer woodcuts, Titian paintings and Michaelangelo's David (etc.) because they've got HUR HUR HUR DONGS LOL. There's an interesting set of articles by people who have worked at BBFC, describing exactly what it's like censoring movies and video games for a living.
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