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British Video Recordings Act 1984 Invalid

Posted by timothy on from the slight-reprieve dept.

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."

14 of 340 comments (clear)

  1. OMG, freedom. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What are we going to do with it?

    1. Re:OMG, freedom. by Alzheimers · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Those "no-longer restricted videos" have as much to do with teaching sex as a monster truck rally has to do with teaching you how to drive.

    2. Re:OMG, freedom. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The whole idea of the European *Union* is that part of the sovereignty is sacrificed for something beneficial, like open borders (good for the economy), and reducing the likelyhood of war between European countries (you can think of the EU as a response to two world wars).

      Not everybody is happy about that, of course, partly because the EU is not as democratic as it should be. In some countries the EU constitution was voted away in a referendum because of that.

    3. Re:OMG, freedom. by imamac · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A european country in the EU will eventually end up just as "sovereign" as a state in the US.

    4. Re:OMG, freedom. by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Funny

      Those "no-longer restricted videos" have as much to do with teaching sex as a monster truck rally has to do with teaching you how to drive.

      Exactly: it will teach you how to do it THE AWESOME WAY.

    5. Re:OMG, freedom. by bbtom · · Score: 5, Informative

      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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  2. Scandalous by RobVB · · Score: 5, Informative
    FTA:

    "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.
    1. Re:Scandalous by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 5, Informative

      Of course not.

      "An emergency Injunction was passed until a formal law could be passed."
      The Censorship Nazgul don't give up that easily.

      --
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  3. Re:Of course, Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Great post! Slashdot really needs a "+1 refers to '1984' somehow" mod option.

  4. Hurray?! by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So when society DOESN'T collapse into anarchy, are they going to realize this law was idiotic and unnecessary and not pass it again?

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    If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
  5. Re:Hang On by jfengel · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."

  6. Re:Hang On by Dr.+Hok · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can a British lawyer please tell me at what point notification of the European Commission became a requirement for an Act of Parliament to become legally binding? Surely such a surrender of sovereignty was exactly the sort of thing Thatcher opposed?

    You call that surrender of sovereignty? Think again. The government didn't have to ask for permission to pass this law, it was only supposed to inform the European Commission. In other words: make it public, so their European partner countries know what's happening in their neighborhood. That's just common sense.

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  7. Re:This is absurd by EddyPearson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thats not how we do it in the UK mate. Here we make as many laws as possible, criminalizing as many people as we can. This so that when we decide we don't like them anymore there's a quick exit waiting. It also makes it easier for the police to root out the bad guys. When everybody has committed at least one crime, gives them leverage.

    This was an embarressing oversight, normal service will be resumed shortly.

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  8. More freedom - no copyright now?! by chrb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I added this as a comment to the original submission but it didn't get picked up.

    According to The Telegraph this also means that there is now no copyright on DVDs. I'm not sure of the reasoning for this since copyright is supposed to be enforced by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, but that's the legal system for you.

    So, apparently the UK is now (unwittingly) running the first national experiment in the abolition of copyright and age controls on DVDs. Should be interesting!