Government to Ban Violent porn

[A-C]

It sounds worse than it is. Juries get to decide subjective terms like 'life-threatening', same way as they do ones in current law like 'likely to deprave and corrupt' ... they don't convict too often.

And if they remove jury trials for porn like they did some fraud cases, noone will ever get convicted, cos High Court judges are the number 1 consumers of BDSM videos ... er, allegedly.

[planeterotica]

A-C wrote:
>
> And if they remove jury trials for porn like they did some
> fraud cases, noone will ever get convicted, cos High Court
> judges are the number 1 consumers of BDSM videos ... er,
> allegedly.
>
>
Yes and that includes a large number of M.P.s. top Police Officers and Civil Servants allegedly, so they may well score an own goal on this one and it will be interesting exactly how the legislation is written for this proposed law but leaving the top pervs in our society free to view their favourite fetish without fear of being prosecuted!annoyed!

[DanG]

Smoking fetish videos feature life threatening activity...are we going to ban those too?

Under this legislation, surely every horror film should be banned, as well as any action movies that feature people being shot? After all, no one actually gets strangled to death for real in asphyxiation fetish videos, just like no one actually gets shot and killed in Hollywood movies (well, apart from poor Brandon Lee in 'The Crow', that is), so I really don't see the difference.

When I was distributing videos, I wrote to the BBFC at the time they were asking distributors to put 'Safe Sex' advisories on their films and asked them if they were going to ask distributors of mainstream films to put warnings before their films advising against using knives/guns/etc. (given the rapidly escalating use of said items by young hoodlums)...oddly enough I never got a reply. Funny that.

[andy ide]

I'm insulted and angered by this proposal as much as everyone else but I think it would be helpful to focus on the definition that's been given as to what will constitute illegal pornographic material, namely material "featuring violence that is, or appears to be, life-threatening or is likely to result in serious and disabling injury".

For example, it would not prohibit some scenes of non-consensual sex. If you had a man raping a woman, using no weapon, just brute strength to overpower her and with no attempt at strangulation with his hands, I think a jury, guided by the judge to stick to the specifics of the definition, would let that off very quickly. A far more grey area would be a scene in which a man holds a knife to the naked body of a bound woman and runs it up and down over her, pressing it into the skin but not cutting it. The woman's reactions are such that they can be read in one of two ways (or both) -- fear or excitement. The scene refuses to clarify whether this is a consensual or non-consensual situation. I could see a jury getting a bit tangled up with this. The presence of the knife and the way it is used constitutes a "life-threatening" implement but does the scene actually feature violence that is "life-threatening"? I could imagine some jury members deciding that the use of the knife on her skin was violent (mixing/confusing implied with actual) and, because of the nature of the implement, consequently "life-threatening".

Even when if later became clear that the woman was sexually excited and the pair proceeded to bonk with gay abandon -- thus defining the start of the scene in ways that would not break the law -- it would still hold true that during the first few minutes when it was not defined, when it was actually been consumed by the viewer in real time, it could be falling foul of the definition.

Hence the justified concern of the BDSM community.

I'd like to watch a scene like that (potential three years). I'd like to make a scene like that (potential five years).

Given the hugely invasive nature of this proposed new law into our private lives and civil liberties, I think that the least the government could have done would have been to fake a little respect for the the UK citizenship and come up with a wording that was more logical and helpful.

[Jacques]

Well we don't actually need the legislation anyway, anything featuring actual non-consensual acts, violate existing laws globally. Put it on the web and you offer evidence of your crime to law enforcement. So those who might be harmed watching this stuff are infact already protected.


But the biggest problem of all of this is that NuLab cannot now back down on this one as it will be seen to have failed Liz Longhurst despite the fact that if anyone has read the appeal transcript will know that her daughter's death was NOT caused because of images on the internet.

[andy ide]

What do you mean by 'actual non-consensual' acts, Jacques? Do you include fictitious scenarios in that? Someone on the other thread mentioned a Marc Dorcel movie of a few years back that featured an acted-out rape scene. I've seen these on several occaisions in mainstream, glossy French and Italian porn. Mario Salieri wouldn't have the reputation he has as an erotic film-maker without the dark edge of the earlier movies of his that I've seen. But I haven't seen anything for a while now. Can you point to a specific legal change that's taken place in the last ten years that now prohibits these directors and producers from featuring non-consensual sex?

[Jacques]

'Actual non-consensual acts' means exactly that and 'non-consensual sex' is rape which is punishable by internment.

Now you've made the odd video or two. If you video'd 'non-consensual sex' what do you think would happen to you? If it was 'fictional non-consensual sex' i.e. acting out a rape fantasy then that is entirely different. But how does a jury decide? The former clearly falls within what I previously stated, the latter does not but has the potential to be viewed as such.

[Marino]

So I can watch peolpe being beheaded. I can watch seven year old boys being shot dead in the street with his father cradleing him in his arms as he dies. Oh and I can see people just as they have been blown up. Well at least I have the news cooperations I can still wank over. Because that is of course what we obviously get from our porn.
Thank heavens for channel 4, we can still get our kicks from Ted Bundy docimentaries.

Or I can watch a girl take it up the bum hard and risk going to jail. No thanks. That bloody porn is the reason everything is shit. All the violence going on in South African townships is down to someone have a blue movie somewhere in the villages.
The Sunami was caused by too many of us wanking over violent porn at one time which caused the earth plates to shift.

Famine, again our fault. If we had sent our money to the warlords, instead of spending it on porn, then no one on this planet would be hungry.

I personally take responsibillity for those poor Russian school kids all murdered by rebels, because I am sure the terrorists were watching a Road Trip before they came up with the idea to massacre innocent kids.

And all of you should hang your heads in shame. Global warming directly linked to us using too much electricity late at night watching your videos . dvd's and downloading filth to your computers, frocing the power stations to burn more coal to feed our sexual desires. I hope you are all proud you have ruined the world.

I am now thinking of changing my carrer, and becoming a mercenary. Do a bit of killing in eastern europe maybe a little stint of murder in africa. A much more wholesome choice of lifestyle me thinks.

[Jacques]

Marino can I "borrow" the ideas from your post? I would like to email it to Stephen Ruddell at the Home Office and see what he has to say about it.

[strictlybroadband]

Marino wrote:

> I am now thinking of changing my carrer, and becoming a
> mercenary. Do a bit of killing in eastern europe maybe a little
> stint of murder in africa. A much more wholesome choice of
> lifestyle me thinks.

I'd recommend becoming a national leader. Somewhere like Britain, America or Israel comes to mind. Then you can order your army to scatter cluster bombs around wherever you feel like, thus blowing inquisitive small children to pieces. If a cameraman is lucky enough to catch this on film, it makes for really entertaining viewing, highly recommended since you can't watch "extreme" porn anymore.

The best bit is, you're guaranteed immune from prosecution, and you'll get a REALLY well-paid job when you eventually decide to quit.