Will the UK make kinky porn a crime?

Image by my friend Capatio from Captive Culture.

In the Orwellian near future (next week), a bill outlawing “extreme pornography” will be made into law across the UK — that’s *possession*. So, if you have files from Kink.com on your computer and you live in London, looks like if this truly ignorant bill passes you could be prosecuted under their vague definitions. I’m all for making (and enforcing) laws about sex with animals and necrophilia (duh), but it’s the less tangible kinkiness in the bill’s wording that’s much more of a concern, and could racket up some seriously uneven prosecutions. Not to mention we’re talking about having people assess porn and sex acts without having any knowledge about the acts, the culture and the rules of “safe, sane and consensual” that go with BDSM and kink culture. And it’s punishing the viewer. This stinks from every angle: it also leaves no room for people who have unknowingly infected computers (remember the teacher — Julie Amero — who faced jail time for “showing” her school kids porn when her not-updated public school computer had a popup/adware blizzard?). It’s also being admittedly rushed through with little reflection or discussion, and tacitly agrees without debate that porn and violent images make people do these things in real life, which is a myth. Porn doesn’t, and can not, *make* anyone do anything: people who rape and murder do so without porn just fine. Banning porn does not fix the problem of society’s psychopaths. If we followed this twisted thinking to its end, then my copy of Basic Instinct would have me being the first female Ted Bundy. Not that I actually *own* a copy of that dreadful film. And not that Basic Instinct shouldn’t be against the law. It should.

Here’s a snip from the BBC’s When does kinky porn become illegal?:

Five years ago Jane Longhurst, a teacher from Brighton, was murdered. It later emerged her killer had been compulsively accessing websites such as Club Dead and Rape Action, which contained images of women being abused and violated.

When Graham Coutts was jailed for life Jane Longhurst’s mother, Liz, began a campaign to ban the possession of such images. Supported by her local MP, Martin Salter, she found a listening ear in then home secretary, David Blunkett, who agreed to introduce legislation to ban the possession of “violent and extreme pornography”.

This was eventually included in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which gets its final reading this week and will get Royal Assent on 8 May.

Until now pornographers, rather than consumers, have needed to operate within the confines of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act (OPA). While this law will remain, the new act is designed to reflect the realities of the internet age, when pornographic images may be hosted on websites outside the UK. Under the new rules, criminal responsibility shifts from the producer – who is responsible under the OPA – to the consumer.

But campaigners say the new law risks criminalising thousands of people who use violent pornographic images as part of consensual sexual relationships.

People like Helen, who by day works in an office in the Midlands, and enjoys being sexually submissive and occasionally watching pornography, portrayed by actors, which could be banned under the new legislation. (…read more — thanks Lawgeek!)