What takes place between consenting adults is not the business of government or anyone else.. Its private!

Yet another attack on the right of consenting adults to practice sexual acts which the mainstream will find "odd." Because of this oddness, I doubt this proposal will gain much active support from the mainstream. This is precisely why "odd" things need more protection than mainstream activities. People at best will see the criminalisation of those caught by this legislation as "not their concern." And at worst they will see the punishment as deserved, because the people involved are "odd."

I would like to see legislation enacted to protect people's right to be "odd."

I agree with Badger. Only two things matter on any porn topic, in my view:

Protecting minors. Surely we have enough laws on that subject!

Avoiding offence to those who do not wish to see porn etc. Websites are supposed to give a warning and ask you to confirm that you wish to see adult material. This is generally obeyed, after all, there is no benefit to the porn merchants in offending people who wouldn't dream of buying their products anyway.

If anyone kills another person, they should be hung. If you also hung all those who are in prison at the moment, it would solve your prison population problem.

Also prison sentences should be longer, to deter people from doing the crimes.

Also, come out of Europe, and have a limit on the number of Europeans that can come in.

 If this Law were fully enforced, every person in these islands would be due a three- year stretch.
 It's the most absurd Law I've ever heard of.

We are fortunate to live in a period of time when it is unlikely that the urge to give pleasure to a person who is in pain will be anything more than part of a game. Pain is an altogether rare thing in the 21st century and for that we should be thankful.

That does not mean that those without the urge to give pleasure to people who are in pain should be empowered to victimise those among us who do. The idea that being attracted to someone who is in pain makes you dangerous is completely unfounded and this law is harmful.

I campaigned against this legislation when it was proposed and first introduced. The main area of concern relates to the possession of violent pornography. This is because the legislation is so unclear that it violents the human right to a fair trial. Citizens cannot know what they are permitted to view and so cannot be expected to change their behaviour in order to comply with the legislation. Just one example relates to the section which says extreme porn could include the insertion of a sharp object into the breast, anus or genitals. I wrote to the Home Office and asked if this related to nipple piercings. The official had no idea and referred me to the Crown Prosecution Service. I wrote and asked but was simply told that the CPS does not provide legal advice. I wrote again and demanded an answer - I was told to get a lawyer! This is utterly rediculous.

The former Labour government assured Parliamment that full guidance would be published before the legislation came into effect but neither the Home Office nor the CPS provided specific or clear instructions. Labour government ministers and civil servants must have known that they were misleading Parliament. The Home Office and CPS still refuse to provide specific and clear guidance on theior websites (or by post).

This legislation also impacts unfairly upon a significant minority group - the "BDSM community". Everyone else can enjoy their poreferred types of porn, even where unprotected group sex can lead to death (e.g. through HIV) but the BDSM community has far less dangerous activities restricted by this legislation.

So I agree - abolish Section 63, or at least that part which relates to consensual violence. It is unenforceable and a gross violation to the right to a private life.

It is grossly illiberal for it to be illegal to possess pictures or videos of consensual sexual acts between adults.

There is absolutely no evidence that viewing this type of material leads people to commit crimes, and no reason at all why images of BDSM or similar acts should be any more damaging than the incredible levels of violence in many modern TV programs and films.

This law does nothing apart from needlessly criminalising hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, and significantly reducing the right to freedom of expression. It is, in effect, the essence of the erosion of civil liberties under labour.

This legislation is pointless. It was only introduced by Labour in order to make them look good.

Only Labour supported this the Libdems opposed it and the Conservatives abstained.

It is yet another piece of legislation put in there to 'send a message'. I would like to send a message to the people that dreamed this stuff up .......

As an adult in a modern 'democratic' society, I find it incredible that censorship in any form is necessary at all. When censorship is used for national security it may be justified.

What justification is there for this law that wants to penalise people for viewing or posessing images for their own enjoyment, when those images depict acts that are not illegal between consenting adults? This law was enacted by those who want to enforce their own moral standards on everyone for 'the common good' whatever that is. Why should a minority of power-hungry authoritarians views of what is right or wrong, disgusting or immoral be forced on the general public?

This badly thought out law was drummed up by a few Labour MPs as an attempt to gain support in their local constituencies. Despite a huge amount of data to show that pornography does not encite violence the bill was pushed through without proper consultation. Most ordinary people were too frightened of being labelled perverts to speak up against it before it became law, but after there was and still is a fair amount of media coverage showing that a majority think it is unnecesary or against their civil liberties.

Let's get rid of censorship, let's get rid of this rediculous law.

This is probably one of the most irrational and badly worded pieces of legislation the last government brought into being. It places more innocent people in danger of prosecution for a serious crime, than any other law I know.

The so-called evidence they gave to support this law, The "Rapid Evidence Assessment", compiled by anti-pornography campaigners, was little more than propaganda, very biased and it did not reflect the data. It was blasted as worthless and biased by many academics.

If this law were to merely ban the owning of pornographic images showing actual abuse, necrophilia or bestiality, then few would seriously oppose it.

Unfortunately, in their "enthusiasm" the then government thought it was a good idea to ban fictional images too. So we are allowed to see fictional depictions of rape, torture and even mass murder in mainstream films and on t.v., but still images of the same will get you prosecuted as a sex offender. In fact, this law twists logic so far that it makes this true -even if the video and stills are from the same source!

Real images of necrophilia and bestiality would not be missed by many I think, but the vast majority of what is classed as "extreme pornography" is showing BDSM (Bondage domination and sada-masochism)role-playing games. Consensual fun between adults. Finding the kind that shows any serious harm (by that I mean the legal definition of serious, -more than trifling and causing lasting injury), i.e. finding anything more than red bums and sore nipples, is very difficult indeed. sure it is meant to look the part, just like any fiction is, but in reality, is little more than slightly above the level of "Miss Whiplash". What most people would laughingly call "A bit kinky". In fact the pictures of Max Mosley, published in the press, come every close to fulfilling the definitions of this law.

So we are now in the, frankly irrational, situation where you can be prosecuted, on life altering charges, for looking, in private, at images of consenting adults, taking part in perfectly legal activities.

Since most sites, for this kind of thing, now show clearly that all models are adult, consenting, are unharmed and quite happy after each scene, U.S. laws made this compulsory, I would suggest including something similar to the new defence proposed by Liberty;

"That the defendant could reasonably believe that the images shown were fictional depictions."

@mwoods: Indeed - and ironically, this law would actually risk criminalising anyone who viewed a website with an illegal image, even if they didn't want to see it. Whatever laws we have on publication, a law against possession makes no sense: even if we deem viewers to be harmed by viewing "extreme" images, it would be like dealing with assault by criminalising the victims!

Please repeal this law. Unfortunately sexual freedoms are often lost under the "civil liberties" umbrella, which I think is a shame. It's not about "freedom to look at porn", but freedom for consenting adults to not be locked up for what they do in private, including making or viewing images.

See http://www.opsi.gov.uk/[…]/ukpga_20080004_en_9#pt5-pb1-l1g63 , http://en.wikipedia.org/wik[…]ce_and_Immigration_Act_2008 .

Even if there should be restrictions on publication of some images, there is no justification for criminalising the viewer (where is the victim?), and the law applies to images that are never published (e.g., consenting adults taking photos of their own acts in the bedroom).

Criminalising staged acts is a particular concern, but even for actual acts, the definitions have left many of those in the BDSM community unclear as to what images may or may not be illegal. Even if an act is risky, that is no argument for criminalising a depiction of it - we do not criminalise images of horseriding or mountain climbing. Even for laws against things like drugs, it's the act that is criminalised; no one would suggest criminalising possession of depictions of drugs! Most of the arguments for this law were anti-porn arguments that would apply to all sexual images, and it is unfair to target and stigmatise those who practice and view "violent" consensual sex, when criminalising all sexual images would never be supported (I hope!) in this country.

The Rapid Evidence Assessment was deemed by 40 academics to be "extremely poor, based on contested findings and accumulated results... one-sided and simply ignores the considerable research tradition into "extreme" (be they violent or sexually explicit) materials..." (http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/acad_statement.html)

The defence for "consensual acts" (Section 66) is limited to those who "directly participated", and doesn't even include the person taking the photo.

Some possible amendments that could be used include:

* http://www.publications.parliament.uk/[…]/ml041-iib.htm (Clause 63: restricting the law to images where a sexual offence is committed.)

* http://www.publications.parliament.uk/[…]/ml016-id.htm (Clause 113, 114, 115: restricting the law to actual acts, rather than realistic portrayals.)

* http://www.publications.parliament.uk/[…]/pb0150901m.279-285.html (Amendments 3-10: restricting the law to actual acts; and 179: allowing a defence of reasonably believing that no one in the image was made to act against their will.)

* http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/wp/?page_id=82

There are no known cases involving non-consenting participants (much like "snuff films") anyway, but such hypothetical images could still remain illegal if the law were amended. Even having it as a defence (with the burden of proof on the defendant) would be at least something!

The coalition Government may fear adverse political consequences from repealing such a law, but there seems little evidence of this being a problem. Whilst some issus like drugs or "video nasties" have involved media uproars, there was no uproar associated with this law. Whilst some columnists supported it, many others criticised it ( http://www.seenoevil.org.uk/[…]/index.php?title=Template:Media ). If this law was amended or repealed in a larger Freedom Act, it seems doubtful that this law would get any significant special attention.

Amending the law to only cover non-consensual acts would still give Liz Longhurst her law, whilst curing the problems of this law.

A British survey in 2001 showed 14% of men and 18% of women describe themselves as into bondage. To put those numbers into perspective, you know and trust people who are.

Sorry, the link to those numbers got lost. Have some proof.

http://www.revisef65.org/antall_eng.html

Section 65 should never have made the statute book. It only did so to get a headline in the papers for a bankrupt goverment more intent on passing laws than running the country.

"It only did so to get a headline in the papers"

Indeed - and it didn't even manage that. There was no wave of media support. Criticism on the other hand came from across the media, ranging from The Guardian to even The Daily Mail.

I did once see an article in The Sun giving full support to this law. Then I realised the article was David Blunkett's column... (and he was the Home Secretary in 2004 when plans for the law were first started).

A nasty law imposed by very nasty people.

I am now in the bizarre situation where I could be prosecuted, with huge prison and other implications, for looking, in private, at images of consenting adults, taking part in perfectly legal activities, in the UK.

I could look at the same images in the USA, Ireland, France or potentially in a general release movie (if I don't freeze frame) and not be subject to this though crime!

This is a really bad law that benefits nobody but harms and restricts thousands.

With regards to the notion of 'dangerous images' and its consequences for adults with an interest in bondage/fetish orientated consensual sex, this was a genuinely oppressive law that potentially and needlessly criminalised thousands of entirely harmless people. The essential issues are as follows:

1) Vagueness. I am to this day unclear if viewing images of consensual adults engaged in bondage activity constitutes breaking the law. The intent seems to be to crack down on the most 'extreme' pornography, but is written in ways that potentially allow a jury to decide what the law really is. Needless to say given the generally private, intimate nature of one's sexual interests and the stigma attached, we all understand that in all likelihood the damage is done when the charge is pressed. If people do not know where they stand then the law cannot be followed and prosecutions are more akin to persecutions. It is simply poor lawmaking.

2. 'Possession'. Due to the large amounts of 'kinky' and rough pornography being produced, if you are searching for pornography in general it is very difficult to avoid exposure to an image that may technically be illegal, given the vagueness of the law. As many will know it is entirely possible, if rare, unfortunately to come across an image that is clearly illegal. Simply because in a public sphere anyone can upload an image others do not want to see. The law does not seem to understand this and the nature of the Internet and computers in general. Accusing someone of 'possessing' an image they didn't want to see and didn't intentionally 'save' is like accusing someone of stealing a car that they see passing them in the street. The state needs to exercise some common sense.

3) Responsibility. The law was bought in because of the actions of one convicted murderer. I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that the state has effectively allowed a murderer to have such influence over law. It should be clear to most reasonable adults that there is no excuse for his actions. The implication of this law has actually provided him with one. Indeed the message is that the state believes that viewing certain images can turn any citizen into a killer. This is deeply naive and encourages people not to take responsibility for their own actions.

4) Implications for democracy. Of course we all know in fact that most members of parliament do not believe that viewing an image makes one kill. The law was bought in gain votes by being seen to respond to a campaign waged by the relatives of one murderer's victim. Parliament allowed the beliefs of victims who were understandably in no position to be making reasoned, enlightened judgments actually fundamentally affect law.

5) Enforcement. The law was bought in to be seen to be doing something, but as I understand it there is no actual active enforcement and those caught with 'extreme' images are mainly being prosecuted for their possession of child pornography. It is a law that politicians who know better in private than they behave in public do not wish to enforce. This is not worth the fear that has been bought into people's lives.

6) Stigma. The law passed without a high standard of debate due to the nature of what it concerned. The state should be aware that few are going to publicly stand up against a law when to do seems to risk practically declaring one's sexual interests. Thus many objections focus on the fact that we should allow 'distasteful' behaviour even if one personally does not approve. Dissent on the whole had to apologise for its existence. While people who wholly live the fetish lifestyle could more confidently object perhaps, what was missed was the potentially millions of people who have an interest in 'kinky' sex but are not in a situation socially to protest the law. The state should have acted with more restraint and awareness.

7) Thought crime. It's worth mentioning- I am a hard working, law abiding, happy British citizen who happens to occasionally enjoy some bondage orientated pornography. When the law was passed I felt like I had to censor myself. I felt like I should not search for such images. I felt oppressed. The state had suddenly intervened in my private, intimate thoughts. But I am not hurting anyone. No one in the images I'm interested in is hurting anyone. So please- GO AWAY. Or make it clear beyond any doubt that I am not being targeted, as I most certainly shouldn't be.

This is a very bad law and takes the law into everyones bedroom ... A place, as we all know, its best absent ... What we see on film /video is going to be judged differently by every individual ... And sex games can often look non consensual if viewed by other people ... This is a law that just should not be there ... All the legal network is already in position to deal with people who take advantage or harm other people and this law just seems to be unnecessarily devised by some imaginative spinster with too much time on her hand and nothing to do ... It needs to go

Pain is not really my scene, but I'm ashamed to be part of a country that is invading other people's personal lives like this.
This is a serious erosion of civil liberty. Repeal it.

Miriam wrote: "If anyone kills another person, they should be hung. If you also hung all those who are in prison at the moment, it would solve your prison population problem."

Your sense of justice, as well as your faith in the judicial system, is absolutely incredible.

This law brings in thoughtcrime because it uses context to criminalise people for owning photos or videos of acts which could actually be perfectly legal to perform in reality. There are things a person can do with their other half in their own home which are legal, but if they take photos of those acts then they could become criminals for owning those photos. This is patently ridiculous and also sets an extremely dangerous precedent. This law must be removed in order to take away the ability of the state to prosecute us for what we are thinking.

I'm already on record twice on this site as being in favour of repeal of this vile, illiberal and unjustifiable law. I am thus using this post to complain about the You Freedom site itself.

<Off Topic Rant>On the majority of web forums, staffed only by volunteers, it is a trivial matter for threads on duplicate topics to be merged. It usually happens very quickly after a duplicate topic is started and it benefits all users.

I am starting to suspect the reason this hasn't been implemented here, is because HMG really don't want the public to know how close to unanimous the public position is on many topics that may cause moral outrage in certain vocal groups. It causes the same person to post the same message again and again which means the government can claim it is just a few people that want a law repealed, when that is not necessarily the case. It also means discussion doesn't flow in a way that can refine ideas in way that can be used to form a basis for improved legislation or working out which specific clauses of which acts are the ones that need to be repealed. Simply closing threads and posting links to others does not efficiently enable this and it seems very selective which topics this is happening on.

I seriously hope senior people in both Millbank and Cowley Street are reading everyone of these comments, but the more I look at the way the site is moderated, the more it seems like a NuLabour stitch up job of a consultation.</Off Topic Rant>

S63 of the CJIA 2008 cannot possibly be morally justified in any society that considers Freedom of Expression to be one of it's guiding principals.

I helped campaign against this law when it came in, and here are my reasons why:

Summary (tl;dr)

This law:

• Criminalises a large number of otherwise harmless and law-abiding citizens for viewing harmless adult material.

• Failed to achieve its stated objectives.

• Causes considerable harm, and provide no appreciable benefits.

• Disproportionately penalises two sizeable, but unpopular minorities: gay men and sadomasochists.

• Creates a false analogy between harmless adult material and child pornography.

• Abandons the principle of evidence-based legislation.

• Is knee-jerk legislation in response to a single incident.

• Puts the UK out of step with the rest of the civilised world.

In Detail

Criminalises a large number of otherwise harmless and law-abiding citizens for viewing harmless adult material.

The government admitted that there is no evidence of harm caused by, or to, consumers of extreme pornography. There is very little evidence of harm to the producers of this material, despite the nature of the material. With modern post-production techniques, even the most graphic of images can be created on a computer, after the event. In the rare cases where harm is caused producing the material, existing laws are in place.

It is therefore a travesty of justice to imprison someone for viewing images of this sort, no matter how repulsed or offended we may be. It is also inconsistent to punish the possession of images of such acts, simply because they are of a sexual nature, when images of murder, mutilation, etc are all perfectly legal, although the acts themselves are far worse. Graphic images of simulated murder are widely available for entertainment, and real murders are shown on 24-hour news channels, yet no legislation addresses, or should address, these.

Failed to achieve its stated objectives.

The intention is to ‘reduce the demand for such material’ despite the fact that the approach of criminalising things does little to reduce the demand (as we see from the current War on Drugs).

The intention is to ‘protect those who participate in the creation of sexual material containing violence, cruelty or degradation…’, although there is no evidence provided that these participants need or want protection. The idea of ‘notional consent’ being given by these participants is particularly patronising and paternalistic.

The intention is to ‘protect society, particularly children, from exposure to such material’, despite the admitted absence of evidence of harm, to either society or children, and the fact that this material is for adult consumption.

Causes considerable harm, and provide no appreciable benefits.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. - Lyndon Johnson

Considering the number of people who have been affected by this bill, through ‘chilling effects’[1], and the draconian punishments imposed on the few who have actually been convicted, the harm caused is real. Restrictions on pornography are also typically associated with an increase in sex crimes[2].

Given that there is no evidence of harm being caused by this material, the benefits are negligible, save to queasy moralists.

The proposed bill disproportionately penalises two sizeable, but unpopular minorities: gay men and sadomasochists.

Two of the classes of material, ‘Serious violence in a sexual context’ and ‘serious sexual violence’ rely on the presence of ‘serious violence’, which is defined as an act of ‘violence in respect of which a prosecution of Grievous Bodily Harm could be brought…’ GBH has been judged to include acts in which the skin is broken. This would have a particular impact on the BDSM[3] community, as the skin is broken in a significant amount of consensual BDSM activity.

BDSM is a common paraphilia, with some 4.5% of the adult heterosexual population, and 26% of the male homosexual population having an interest [1].

As it is entirely likely that anyone who has an interest in BDSM imagery will have one or more images that contain broken skin, this law criminalises a significant proportion of the adult population. At a minimum 20,000 people currently fall foul of this legislation [4], with a disproportionate number being gay men.

The bill creates a false analogy between harmless adult material and child pornography.

This law create an analogy between child pornography and the so-called extreme pornography discussed in the rest of the document. This is a false analogy, for the following reasons:

• There is considerable evidence of harm caused by paedophilia, and it is right that efforts should be made to prevent the production of material that may encourage the commission of paedophile acts. There is no corresponding evidence for the harm caused by extreme pornography, as the document itself admits.

• The making of child pornography necessarily requires the commission of a crime in its manufacture (pseudo images aside). This is not necessary for extreme pornography, and indeed is rarely the case.

• The making of child pornography requires a child whose consent necessarily cannot be given. Extreme pornography is, in general, created by consenting adults, who are either paid for their participation, or who enjoy the types of acts portrayed.

• There is a global consensus on the undesirability of child pornography. The UK is alone in criminalising the possession of extreme pornography.

The proposed bill abandons the principle of evidence-based legislation.

It states that the authors ‘…believe that most people would find this material abhorrent’, and this theme is repeated throughout the document. This is an irrelevant value judgement. I find many things abhorrent (insects mouthparts, apple turnovers, fat people), but that is no reason to criminalise them.

The rationale behind the legislation seems to be entirely based on simplistic moralisation and political point scoring. There is not one shred of evidence of harm.

The definition of ‘most people’ is also inexcusably vague for a document of this kind. In proposing legislation, one should be aware of the number of people one is preparing to criminalise [4].

The law is knee-jerk legislation in response to a single incident.

This was a knee-jerk response to the campaign by Liz Longhurst after the unfortunate murder of her daughter Jane Longhurst. Whilst I sympathize with Mrs Longhurst, it is wrong in principle to have legislation formulated by the wishes of victims.

Puts the UK out of step with the rest of the civilised world.

No other non-totalitarian country in the world has, or is proposing legislation of this kind. Hence any local laws do not affect the production of this material, or the interest in it. It is probable that it also fails to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, due to the number of people criminalised, the difficulty in deciding whether material falls under this legislation, the severe nature of the punishments, and the disproportionate effect on vulnerable minorities.
Notes

1. Sexual preference: its development in men and women, statistical appendix. 1981, Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press. gives a value of 4.5% for heterosexuals, 26% for homosexuals. Some studies show the paraphilia to be as high as 8-10% (Lebegue, 1985, 1991).

2. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/radio/reports/bcr/r18.pdf

3. Bondage, Discipline, Domination and Submission

4. There are ~40m adults in the UK, ~2,000,000 have an interest in BDSM [from 1]. If only 1 in 10 has a picture collection and 1 in 10 of those collections has extreme pornography, that leaves 20,000 adults who have been criminalized.

The New Labour regime was instinctively totalitarian. This ludicrous, puritanical and human rights abusing act was probably their worst law of all and set a terrible precedent for enforcing taste with prison. A vicious assault on the thousands of adults for whom elements of bdsm are an integral part of their sexuality. A law which makes the so called cradle of liberty, England, look like a puritanical state controlled by Mrs Grundy, with its criminal laws written by Anthony Comstock.

This legisaltion is a typical product of the regime which started the destruction of jury trial, ended double jeopardy, criminalised "buying" sex with a strict liability law(for the first time in our history), seized the assets of people unconvicted of crimes, brought in new thought crimes, decided "dirty" drawings of children had physical ages, felt most of the population were potential paedophiles unless closely monitored....

"This new law has New Labour written all over it
..long after the headlines are forgotten, we will be saddled with yet another badly drafted law, to add to the 3000-plus new criminal offences already created under Labour"

-Tom Utley, The Daily Mail 2006

".. Liberal Democrats firmly believe that matters of taste have no role in censorship. In holding this policy, we are not condoning sexually explicit or violent material. We are stating the principle that people should be able to make their own judgments about what they say, read or see, without interference from the State, unless there will be real harm to others. As a Christian, I do not condone sexually explicit material. As a Liberal, I respect other people’s freedom to make their own choices"
...
"...some who argue that sexually explicit material leads people to commit acts of violence, but these claims are flawed. They are based on misleading evidence. Almost every major official study in the United States, Canada and the UK has shown that it is simply not possible to establish a direct causal link between sexually explicit material and violent behaviour".

-Mr Charles Kennedy MP, former Liberal Democrat leader, pubished on melonfarmers site Oct 2005 .(full text can be found at http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/argch05.htm)

Is there evidence images create copycat sex crimes?
No there is not, if there was New Labour would have trumpetted it to the heavens in their consultation paper instead of relying on rumours and myths. A criminally inclined pervert can access supposedly "banned" images as easily now as before this law existed.

Would a sex criminal stop looking at images merely because it was "illegal"?
Of course not.

Can children still access such images ?
Yes, same as before this law existed. It remains a parents duty to "police" such matters-this inept law changes nothing.

Is there any evidence of real life abuse in production of images, of there existing abuse an of adults on a scale similar to the abuse of children which justify interference in privacy over possessing child images?
No there is not. Again, if there was, New Labour and Martin Salter MP would have presented it. The criminalisation of images hosted legally in the USA is just one illustration of the lack of rational justification for the measures and penalties in the legislation.

So, on the basis of evidence we have, who is made safer by the existence of this law, who on earth is being "protected" by it?
As far as concrete evidence is concerned, no actual "problem" has been established necessitating a law, so we can probably answer-"Nobody". The law therefore should not exist.

Did the Conservatives find serious fault with the law and finally refuse to support it?
Yes they did. In commons committee they called in vain for major revision of the legislation. In the only place it was debated/ voted on directly, in the Lords, they called for it to be rethought and mostly abstained rather than voted to support it.

Did the Liberal Democrats identify this as a bad unnecessary proposed law during its passage?
Yes they did. Being a deeply irrational law criminalising private taste and sexuality, it would be astonishing if people who pride themselves on being liberals could permit such crazy repressive legislation to remain now they can get rid of it.

This then is a prodnosed, repressive and deeply ridiculous law (the UK is a laughing stock among the western nations for having it), one which perfectly meets every single one of the criteria the coalition has made in defining bad laws which need removal or revision (unnecessary, unjustified invasion of privacy, human rights/civil liberties abusive, badly thought out knee jerking, shoddy and incoherent, created by the twisting of the correct procedures for legislation etc). It is a law dangerous to just about anyone's freedom. Images which might be deemed illegal are not uncommon and can be easily stumbled upon (quite unlike child indecency images). Thus they can be automatically stored and retained in a computer cache, without the owner even being aware of it. The law potentially has millions of victims in homes throughout the UK.

One does not have to be a fan of pornography (I am not), to assert that where there is no evidence of harm, where there are no identified victims, there should be no criminal offense. The "dangerous pictures act" is the opposite of evidence led legislation.
It is probably the worst, most dangerous law passed in the UK in the modern era, because of the terrible principle it is actually based in, that the state has the right to criminalise private taste and thought. For, as well as being bad in itself, it sets an appallingly dangerous precedenct. Not for more mere government "bans", but for more laws imprisoning people for looking at or reading things privately which some fanatical politician or pressure group doesn't approve of-totalitarianism. This is a genuinely evil and oppressive law. If the freedom bill means anything, such appalling legislation as this cannot be allowed to stand as it is.

It is not for the government or anyone else to criminalise what happens between consenting adults, and I find it disgusting that it has been made illegal to even possess involving oneself and partner(s) engaging in consensual activity. It is needlessly criminalising thousands of ordinary people for no reason.

When films like SAW are being made and watched by millions, the majority of whom don't go and re-enact them, why do the government presume that watching people engage in consensual activity would make people more likely to commit a crime? It doesn't make any sense.

its becoming more obvious Labour made way too many laws in their sexual offences (witchhunt) act 2003.

It should be of no concern whatsoever to the government what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own homes. Under this draconian legislation, people can be sent to prison for the mere possession of an image in which no-one was harmed and everyone involved was fully consenting and having fun. This disgraceful, illiberal, puritanical legislation should be repealed at the earliest opportunity.

It should be of no concern whatsoever to the government what consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own homes. Under this draconian legislation, people can be sent to prison for the mere possession of an image in which no-one was harmed and everyone involved was fully consenting and having fun. This disgraceful, illiberal, puritanical legislation should be repealed at the earliest opportunity.

Regulation on the Pornography industry Should be stricter and this law should NOT be repealed.

This law is in place to restrict HARMFUL material from being viewed, owned or profited from.

thp45
Oh, should it ? Most people completely DISAGREE with you and quite right too.

Now please justify why you want to censor and restrict other people's freedom of expression and their right to view what they want ? The laws prohibiting child abuse were fair enough but censorship by prohibition of possession shoiuld have STOPPED right there.

So PLEASE tell me where the harm is ? As the person wanting to restrict other people YOU have to justify it. People who don't want the restriction do not have to justify why they have the freedom. YOU (or rather the authorities) have to justify why that freedom has to be taken away. So please, please tell us.

Such material is freely allowed on the continent in most FREE countries.. Perhaps you can find your HARM there ? But I doubt it.

Harm by the way isn't just offense. Legallly it is muc more than that.
 

To : shaunhw

Thankyou for your comment, clearly we both have different views on what many people may find wrong and offensive. But also i am interested in your view of freedom, yes i agree that the internet should not be regulated the same way as a communist state but i do think that children should have the FREEDOM to use the internet with out parents fearing that what their kids are viewing is not completely obscene ( lets remember what this law bans such as pornography involving dead or alive animals, sexual interference with a human corpse, an act which threatens a person’s life. Lets face it to 99% of the british population would find this law very sensible and think it should go further. ) i and many other people have the view that this sort of material should not be viewed by any Adults let alone Children. Research shows european countries with liberal attitudes to obscene material have much higher rates of sexual crime and so i do not think as your comment says that it does no Harm is 100% correct !!

I love living in a Liberal nation such as the UK where people are free. But i think that in the 21st Century that the government should start to get a grip of Pornography which in a age of female equality does little to improve mens attitudes towards women and instead degrades them. I understand that other countries have easier access to obscene material than in the UK but i think now the new coalition Government should set a new world example on this subject, any politican would certainly get a lot of support from myself and no doubt from women all over Britain.

"If this Law were fully enforced, every person in these islands would be due a three- year stretch. It's the most absurd Law I've ever heard of."

Absolutely. It's the most ridiculously broad, yet ambiguous, definition of anything I've ever seen or heard - you can't base a law on that. Potentially this law can be used to at very least intimidate *anyone* - have you checked the links/photos in every email your friends have sent you in your inbox? Are you sure the police/courts couldn't find at least one thing they could prosecute on? One of the biggest threats to democracy out there.

To thp45
I would just like to point our that I (the person who started this post) am a woman so please feel free to express your views but do not imply that you are speaking for all women.
It would appear that you seem to advocate the banning of pornography completely which is not really the issue being discussed at the post - this post is intended to discuss whether one kind of pornography (which let us remember includes the filming of legal acts between consenting adults) should be banned while others are perfectly legal.

I don't believe anyone who supports this law has really thought about it properly. It usually boils down to "pornography bad, therefore ban pornography" or (emotional blackmail) "we need this so Jane Longhurst won't have died in vain" or (more sinisterly) "if you have a problem with this, then you must have something to hide". It is a vage and dangerous law, open to enormous abuse. The government's pathetically irresponsible stance of "lets see how it goes in the courts" is tantamount to sending a ship of novel and untested design out to sea with a full compliment of passengers and saying "let's see if it sinks".

thp45

Actually, good research from the USA has shown that sex crime declines when porn is more freely available, rather than rises. There is no evidence access to porn creates sex crime.

How on earth can you assert, without any evidence, that "99%" of people would support this law and want it made even stricter?.
If such a law is so wonderful, why is the UK unique in the western world in having such absurd and reperessive legislation?
Why did it get massed opposition in the Lords (NL were too scared to allow even a proper debate on it in the commons), so NL were forced to "whip" it through the upper house to get it passed?
Why did Tory and Lib Dems on the original bill committee-and a Labour member too (Edward Garnier, David Heath, Harry Cohen), call for it to be scrapped or amended in a major way? Why did the home office's own public consultation-totally biased by the way-still result in a massive rejection of any need for this law from respondents?
There was no popular mandate for this law, there wasn't even press support from middle England organs like the Daily Mail.

The law does not "ban", it criminalises possession-it can't remove images, children can access "banned" images in exactly the same way as before this law existed. It remains for parents to police the net, this idiotic law changes nothing in that regard. As its advocates claimed preventing children accessing certain images was a major reason that consenting adults were to be turned into new criminals by this law-something this law cannot do at all-the law is, on that basis, totally useless and completely irrational.

Do you believe consensual BDSM images should put people in jail for years, as is possible under this wicked legislation? Do you know possessing images found in completely legal films can put people in jail under this incoherent, schizophrenic law?

As even the advocates of this law could not show a single proven case, no not one, of real life abuse in image production (totally different to the case with child images, the phony parallel drawn by the NL home office), or proper evidence such images creating real life harm, this is a law which simply criminalises and bosses about the public on the basis of taste and sexuality. No free society can be said to exist where criminal laws exist merely on the basis of a few pressure groups thinking some things people choose to look at "don't look nice" and resorting to rumours and opinionating using baseless claims about harm, in order to get such a nasty law created.

The next steps could have been criminalising the written word, and maybe possessing "any" violent "image" whatever "in case they encourage real crimes" (New Labour never gave any sign they knew when to stop with their totalitarian laws to oppress us). Under New Labour most of the adult population would eventually have been potentially threatened with imprisonment over their taste, sexuality, reading preferences. No one is safe once laws are deemed acceptable which create "taste crime" and thought crime and punish on these bases, not on proof of harm absolutely necessitating legislation.

The "dangerous pictures act" is an wicked law, the state intruding viciously in areas in private life without any justifications which can hold in a properly free and liberal society. It is totalitarian law-a typical product of a mean minded, bossy government, which sought to control whole areas of private behaviour and opinions with criminal law, areas once respected as sacrosanct by those who governed the nation.

I should have added to the above that the measure of a persons actual liberalism is if they are ready to defend the free existence of opinions, images, books etc they personally don't like, not just those things they approve of.

I think the scary part about these sort of laws is that they are so open to abuse. The burden of proof required to order the seizing of computers is very low, just reasonable suspition, and it's well known that the police can pull reasonable suspition out of anywhere. The use of anti terror laws is particularly worrying, it is well know that these are often used to arrest people who are innocent of any crimes, yet no judge is going to turn down a search warrent for someone arrested on terrorism charged.
Once they have your computer, all these laws just make it more and more likely they will find something. An illigal image might have got on your computer accidently, computers will automatically download images without action. Deleting images (clearing your cache etc) is no good as they can retrive deleted images quite well. Using software to properly erase files is more likely to draw suspition, and could make them more determined to try and find what you have deleted, which is possible with enough time and the right software (even data that has been written over can still be read).
The more laws like this and the more chances they have of getting anyone who is arrested on something. Suddenly all those innocent people arrested whilst protesting peacefully under some vauge anti terror law can be shown to be criminals afterall, especially if they are perverts (for having some "extream porn" on their computer) or pedophiles (for having a drawing of two people having sex who look like they might be under 18).

This law is an infringement on our civil liberties. The idea that viewing the material noted in the legislation effects our behaviour is society is as rediculous as sugesting gay men and women become straight by watching material featuring hetrosexuals. The basis of this arguement would therefore support the outright ban of much of the mainstream media and film industry. The law was introduced without propoer debate and a knee jerk reaction to the actions of one individual. Furthermore, as a civilised society in the western world it is noreworthy that this law does not exist in other similar countries.

This absurd law which intrudes on people's civil liberties and attacks the foundation of what our democratic society stands for needs to be over turned. This law is designed to hurt and criminalise innocent people who have not done anything wrong - just because they enjoy things in their personal sex lives. We have a right to enjoy sex and pictures of it when done between consenting adults. BDSM is a normal part of the (sex) lives of many people in this country - normal people, some of whom hold respected positions in many jobs and professions. To suggest they are criminals just because an absurd law is made is totally crazy!

This law won't 'save' anybody from harm.

However it it gets in the way of the creation and distribution of any advice that may be offered on how to do things that people will do anyway, more safely.

What happens on a film set between two actors is a scene. They work in a tightly controlled industry and to potentially force these workers into underground productions is highly dangerous.

Having kinky thoughts isn't wrong. Dreaming up scenes involving consenting adults is wrong. Demonising these scenes is wrong. This law is wrong and a knee-jerk reaction to an awful crime. Victimising the people who indulge in this kind of activity doesn't make it go away.

Why ban images of legal acts? It doesn't make sense, especially when there's Page 3. This law doesn't protect people, and only serves to increase paranoia among people who LEGALLY practice these activities. They say that those who cannot judge between reality and fantasy are crazy -- if the law considers both the same, then what does that say about the government?

If friends of mine want to be kinky in the bedroom and film it, I really don't see how that is any business of the state.