I'm off to draw a stick figure eight year old getting it on with a donkey in a paddling pool full of thousand island dressing.

The kid's going to be smoking lethal skunk too.

I'm sure that there are instances of under 18s being sexually active in these (seeing as they share a core content, should be easy enough to track down).

So we can ban them, and all religion based on them, because the followers are clearly all Paedos if they read that sort of filth and claim to live their lives by it. Evidence? Roman Catholic Church, instances of child abuse. Think Of The Children!!!!

(Hey, theo-politicians, you started it...)

This country is getting more restrictive and oppressive every day. The Labour government is intent on total control, "for our own good", "because they know best".

These laws will not remove kiddie pr0n, whether actual or cartoon, written or pictorial, from circulation. All it will do is move the supply of these things further into the hands of organised crime. Throughout history we have multiple examples of oppressions and "for the greater good" laws fueling crime as the populate in general still wanted the produce. Perhaps the best known of these is the USA's prohibition laws. Look how well they were obeyed, and how much crime they generated.

How stupid can a politician be to make a photograph of a legal act or a consensual act between adults, illegal? I know that the blithering idiots don't have any real work to do as the actual work of running this country is now done in Brussels (and that is their fault too) but the country would rather they sat on their backsides doing nothing (or their secretaries) rather than make up stupid and unenforceable laws the the country neither wants or needs. It is now time to make candidates for office take common sense exams. Those without any common sense i.e. the current bunch in parliament, should just be shot as an example to anyone else who wants to 'lead' the country.

These laws could only have been made in a country in which the "people" have no rights at all. It is no wonder that the Labour party wouldn't look at a UK constitution, that would have limited their powers and Labour know no limit to their power.

all those nymphs and cherubs are clearly an incitement

I'm going to cement some sort of reputation as a nerdly type here but let me point thos out: Manga is the japanese name for comics and graphic novels (and is also the name of a company that imports japanese "animé" for some stupid reason). The equivalent of saying you want to ban "manga" would be like saying the police want to have all illustrated books banned because a few of them contain these images. Or saying they want to ban all film and television because some times you can find videos of people doing nasty things to their kids.

There's no denying that the Japanese have quite a reputation for less than savoury comics (and animation) but that's not an excuse to ban *everything* from there. It's like saying Hollywood movies contain sex, so lets ban everything from the United States! And the French, well they're just weird, so lets ban everything French! And the Italians? They've got naked kids painted on the ceiling of their most famous church! PERVERTS!

And that's another thing, I can think of a number of paintings that would be banned by this, with images of the cistine chapel just being the most famous example. A few of them are pretty fruity and feature what would be considered "children" by the standards of some of these bad laws. Sorry, Monet, Raphael and all you other 'artists', you're under arrest.

Does anyone believe this law won't be so overbroad and ridiculously vague as to do all of these things? I bet you it'll be an enabling act as well. This government are very fond of enabling acts, with their lovely statutory instruments that let them arbitrarily expand the provisions of the act without facing parliamentary scrutiny.

As I think I've said before, laws like this are the actions of a government in denial about how much power it actually has. They're desperate to be seen to "do something" that they'll do anything. And, of course, it's "for the children", which means there's nothing to argue against without being twisted into a monster.

I hate that argument.

now those few of you that may actually know are asking "But Graham, you're a christian, shouldn't you be all for banning everything sinful?" No. You don't ban, you don't use the power of the secular state to enforce religious ideas because that power can be turned right back on you. Another religion can come along and use the same mechanisms to subdue you, outlaw things you never intended to be outlawed using the very same laws you originally promoted to enforce your idea of what's moral. The answer is never over-broad and potentially unenforceable law - along with the implicit threat of force contained in any law - but talk. I try and convince you you're doing the wrong thing, you tell me to toss off. That's how a civil society works.

I was going to post this as anon but, frankly, I think it's time people stopped hiding. Like I said, "for the children" mean any argument can dismissed with "you're just a pervert pretending to be about liberty or something", standing up can mean ruining your reputation no matter how logical your argument and no matter what your own moral stance on the issue. I'm a christian. My stance on many things is probably quite easy to glean from that, but I prefer to believe that people can be reasoned around to my way of thinking without the use of great big legal sledgehammers.

Bring on the black helicopters!

It's like these people have never seen the internet.

Paris, coes she looks underage to me (well at least mentally)

So, the government is making my 17 year old step-daughter a criminal if she takes a photo of her and her 19 year old boyfriend getting it on! Have these f*ckwits nothing better to do?

You can add Lolita by Nabokov, most social studies on Medieval Japan, Europe, Asia pertaining to mariage and/or sexual habits up to 1930 (people were married quite younger then, in their 15s and 16s, and for medieval anything you were married around 12-13 y.o.)

You can also outlaw quite a lot of countries were you can marry @ 16 y.o...(don't forget, both the civil code and the wedding pictures will have to be prohibited)

BTW, my grandfater was married @17 y.o, and my Grandmother was 16y.o. at the time. I absolutly must destroy those wedding pictures, I wouldn't want my grandparents to get arrested because they were both pedophiles at the time...And I really hope they didn't take pictures of their honeymoon, it would be an aggravating thingy, circumstance.

Just for fun, I remember a story about a 19 year old that had a 17 year old girlfriend in the US (awful, isn't it ? true depravity ! should never happens...)

The mother of the girl disliked him and reported him to the police...

He is now married with the same girl, but has since acquired a rap sheet as sexual offender/child molester, had to "separate" until she got 18, cannot legally be left alone with his own children or pick them up from school, must report himself to the police if he changes his home adress, ad nauseam.

I also remember that story about a girl of 15 that took pictures of herself barebreasted and sent them to her boyfriend. She actually got arrested for diffusion of underage pictures.

/coat, Mine is the one belonging to the penitentiary administration

No age can be perceived on the drawings in there afterall. The man has a tash but the women do not look adult.

Banning manga... What next, banning adverts for nappies because it has naked babies in them. And baby oil, baby food... baby pain killers (can't remember it's name) as they are sometimes seen in bed, or in a pram looking cute.

Hey ban films with maternity ward scenes as they contain kids asleep half naked. Or anything with an incubator shot in it. Like the news or those kids adverts for the NSPCC because they show half naked kids.

....Will the last sensible person (those with common sense, which means no one from parliament) to emigrate this infested isle, please turn off the lights.

Um, does that mean killing the EVIL girl in F.E.A.R and other games would also be illegal?

Mine is the one with the assault rifle sticking out the pocket

The Ministry of Justice have made some misleading comments. Firstly, Maria Eagle claims that,

"paedophiles could be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons."

She neglects to mention that it is already illegal to do this or to possess any image derived from an indecent photograph of a child, under Section 69 of the recently enacted Criminal Justice and Immigration Act.

Secondly, Ms Eagle claims that,

“This is not about criminalising art or pornographic cartoons more generally, but about targeting obscene, and often very realistic, images of child sexual abuse which have no place in our society."

Photo-realistic images have been illegal under the Protection of Children Act for thirty years. This law will actually only target the possession of virtual child pornography for which no real child has ever been abused.

I've got one or two Bob Crumb cartoon books and some Furry Freak Brothers and Felix the Cat stuff. Looks like I'll get done for being a potential kiddie-fiddler. We won't mention the School Kids edition of Oz and Rupert the Bear.

(might also put up the value of the collection)

the mind police are coming!

I hate to break this to those wonderful people who know so much, but there's already a fair few work-arounds that let hentai depict child porn:

1. They're 18, but they have a "disease" which stopped them aging at 6

2. They're not humans, but cat girls. So I'm not showing a 5 year old child, it's a 19 year old cat-girl who just 'happens' to look 5.

3. F**k you, I'm allowed to say what I want so I'll damn well draw what I want

I'm all for the crack down on Actual photographs, as they require a real child to be abused and that is just sick and wrong. But once you get into censoring *art* then I agree with el reg, it's one slippery slope which could, most likely, end in a book BBQ.

Also: Does this law apply to websites, because I really quite enjoy 4chan. And what happens when I get linked to a violent porn site by someone upping a rick-roll?

“These new proposals will help close a loophole that we believe paedophiles are using to create images of child sexual abuse."

It may seem like the right thing to do as child abuse cannot be tolerated but like many other new legislation e.g. the change in pot classification, its based on BELIEF.

Is it too much to ask that things are thought through a bit more.

I dont think i am the only one that sees the similarity with other belief led oppressive regimes.

Well said; frankly, you've covered everything that I would have wanted to say, and probably with greater eloquence than I could have mustered.

I can see sensible reasons to keep under-18s out of the porn business, but using the child-porn age limit is just stupid. When you have a hammer, you treat every screw as a nail.

I'd be willing to bet that a suspected paedophile got raided, the Police saw a bunch of cartoons, and they are all worked up because they couldn't do anything. But just how many bad people is this going to catch? And how many pre-puberty victims are going to be "groomed" by images of schoolgirls with gargantuan breasts?

I really don't want to know what the sex-life of these politicians is like, but it's hard not to conclude that they're the abnormal freaks, not us.

Don't tell them about Elf Sternberg, please.

“This is not about criminalising art or pornographic cartoons more generally, but about targeting obscene, and often very realistic, images of child sexual abuse which have no place in our society.”

obscene? Perhaps. Realistic? Normally not, unless most of the government have prehensile dicks, the women included.

The whole thing makes me uneasy - Who sets the moral (as opposed to legal) standard, and how far will it go?

Still, we may not need cartoons, as with the newly passed embryo laws, we're only a few lab accidents away from having catgirls running around....

"At the consultation for the Extreme Porn law, one Police Force – Kent – argued also for the criminalisation of written material."

Does this mean that one of the most famous plays ever written, would be up for banning? I believe that Romeo was 14 and Juliet 13, as was the norm in Elizabethan times.

As for this bill, it's another example of legislation which criminalises the pass times of a large number of people, whilst doing absolutety nothing to actually stop abuse/exploitation of children, whilst pandering to Middle England/Daily Mail readers who have lost faith with the failed NuLab project.

*scratching of head*....

I've often thought that some manga was perverse, but what worries me is the "establishment's" inability to draught legislation that doesn't fall into the "law of unintended consequences".

For sake of space, lets include literature and graphical representations.

Surely this is banning that book beginning with L by Nabokov?

Would it also ban the Bible?There are multiple references to "begetting" of under-18s.

By extension/association wouldn't it also criminalise the Torah and Koran.

I'm guessing a fair number of "old masters" paintings around the UK would also be banned, as the subjects are often in suggestive poses and clearly in their teens or younger.

The Ruben's cherub paintings - they're not "cartoons", but they are graphical representations which could quite easily be construed as pornographic. I'm guessing there are depictions of Mohammed with his under-18 wives as well...child abuse according to this logic.

AC, cos I mentioned paedo and a religious figure in the same comment.

I know people and have relatives who cannot see the problem with these laws only the "good" things that the law will do.

I have some Anime and Mange videos home along with some DVDs of movies which I guess I will have to burn.

I think we should all go to Westminster and dump them on the lawn and then torch the movies.

Sort of scary though of how this is so reminescent of the Witch Hunts, and the Inqusition.

here here, well said

So, after banning "Extreme Porn" based on the *belief* that it may cause us to do nasty things without any credible evidence to back that up, this lame duck Government is making another desperate bid for positive headlines by saying "Look, we're doing something! We're protecting children! That's good isn't it?"

Except, again, they have no proof other than their "belief" that this will somehow protect children and they're once more pandering to the prejudices of the Tabloid readers who will start to froth at the mouth at any reference to child porn without stopping to engage in any rational thought.

Of course you can guarantee that the Tories will once again do their famous "Fence Sitting" act, they won't actually *approve* of this law, but neither will they actually have the guts to stand up and oppose it.

Probably, again, the only people with the courage to resist this ludicrous legislation will be the Lib Dems and they will be roundly ignored by those who think that it's not worth supporting them because they won't win, except that if people don't support those who oppose laws like this they never *WILL* win.

Write to your MP via http://www.writetothem.com and tell them that you're not falling for the "won't someone think of the children!" argument, this is not protecting children, it is a Control Freak Government desperately rushing through another Thought Crime before they're kicked out of office.

"They never like to mention that in the UK the vast majority of child abuse is comitted by parents or relatives. It's an uncomfotable truth, so it's much easier to make headline grabbing laws in order to appear to be doing something."

-Exactly. Every girl or boy I've known who was sexually molested as a child, and I mean EVERYONE (and that's a fair few), was done up by a father or other near relative - and don't forget older siblings, too.

The three components to molestation are access, comfort, and trust. The molester has to have consistent access to the child, the child has to be comfortable with the molester's advances, and the parents or guardians have to trust the molester to be alone with the child for long stretches of time.

Except in rare cases of preadolescent nymphomania (or whatever the psychs are calling it these days, probably preadolescent aberrant sexuality), it takes a long time and a lot of PERSONAL CONTACT for a potential molester to groom a child properly - most kids will laugh like hell at requests for naked pix, and potential molesters have learned that the Internet is no safe place to find quick kiddie sex.

The only other real candidates for child molesters, other than parents/relatives, are teachers, daycare specialists, and yeah, priests - they're the only people that parents TRUST. A random child abuser isn't going to grab your kid from a crowded mall and tear down his pants in the bathroom; that's just stupid. He's going to try to insinuate himself into your life first, gain your trust, and THEN abuse it - google Donald Anthony Strawn for a textbook example.

It's the ONE thing that will win you an argument with these bastards, mentioning, "By the way, according to most reputable experts, the ones molesting a child are nine times out of ten going to be either a parent or close relative." It's like playing rock, paper, sucker punch to the balls. Either you shut them up, or you get to watch them writhe around in agony. Win/win.

Why not ban drawings depicting murder? Just in case.

Playing 'Hangman' will be a bit more difficult though.

C'mon ffs - "Broon" didn't pop his cherry 'til his late forties, and then only for political expediency as it didn't look right him not having a wife and kids. Are we really to take our moral lead from a bloke who has had sex twice in his life? Are we seriously to believe that our "leaders" entertain no sexual fantasy darker than "lights out, missionary position " and then only on St Andrew's Day? I think not.

Perhaps, instead of dreaming up more ways of controlling what we think with censorship that will actually increase the number of dirty paedos, that useless shower of wankers in govt might like to do something useful for a change. Like resign.

With the lights going out as our antique power stations trip offline with increasing regularity, we won't be able to read anything considered morally outrageous by that bunch of self-righteous Scottish puritan prudes running the show, except by candlelight.

The peado will be thinking 'If I am going to go down for possession, it may as well be for real/live abuse images rather than so drawings'

The light at the end of the tunnel is for other governments who watch Britain first to see if she can get away with it, and then try it themselves on their own people based on the tried and tested formula used by the UK. As someone else wrote elsewhere: * Law must first blur the lines of common sense in order to engineer our society to the whim of politicians. *

I think the common agreement is that any act such as child abuse that is non-consentual should be stopped, but these new laws are not going to do anything apart from be taken out of context and used against someone who just got unlucky. The main problems seem to surround the complete lack of definition for anything - take the extreme porn law: It could apply to such things as 1950's Bettie Page sets and the covers of those cheesy paperbacks they sell in service stations (My girlfriend and I were discussing this law at Clackets Lane and noticed one showing a girl getting spanked, and had a red mark photoshopped onto her therefore being "a sexual image which portrays an act whereby someone may be injured" and therefore illegal under the violent image law).

I've seen some of the things they are talking about thanks to me not knowing what the word "lolicon" meant until I clicked on it and discovered my eyes were bleeding shortly afterwards (do NOT google that). Under these laws I would be convicted for that despite a complete lack of a mens rea. While the material concerned itself can be pretty sick the nature of this law is just plain wrong, doesn't do anything to protect any innocents and exists solely to garner votes from the Daily Mail readers at the expense of some poor sod

The aforementioned poor sod clicks an unknown link, buys a truckstop paperback without realising the somewhat tame cover breaks the law or gets his PC turned into a porn FTP server by a 14 year old Israeli script kiddie, then gets broken into, the dog bites the crook so the police bother to show up instead of giving a crime number out over the phone like they usually do because the CPS smell a conviction under the dangerous dogs act. They also find this extra dirt to convict on for good measure, no innocents were ever at risk but the detection rate league tables are satisfied. 1984 isn't the handbook, Brazil is.