keep it vague

c'mon, we know by now that any new law in the UK has to be suitable vague and all encompassing otherwise we might just start having crazy ideas about being innocent until proven guilty!!!

Ben Westwood

Is a complete and utter bastard.

That quote invoked quite the most nauseating mental picture that I've ever experienced. I feel the need to go and scrub my mind out with bleach-soaked brillo pads now and I will need more than the usual quantity of beer tonight to wash the taste of bile from my throat.

Ugh, ugh and thrice ugh.

Worse to come

Does this mean that the Reg's Playmobile dioramas will need pixellating*? Will the faces be blanked out to protect innocent children from assuming that half their toy collection is moonlighting, committing dubious acts for the pleasure of others?

Are we all fucked?

*spill chockker on FFox has four suggestions for 'pixellating' two of them are 'titillating' and 'flagellation'.

At last, a clean sociaty

...with freedom and liberty for all*

*Providing you obey the rules and never do, say or think anything that the Miniluv has deemed unsuitable.

"lie back and watch this ... slip in the back door"?

Honestly.

The web....

Most of the mention, so far, seems, to be concerning printed material, books and magazines, which can be fairly 'easily' outlawed by taking them off the shelves.

What effect, if any, is this going to have on the millions, and millions etc etc.... of sites frequented on a daily basis by boys, lads, men and women up and down the land, will this make crims of us all....??

And most importantly what effect is this going to have on everybodys favourite french hotel..??

Oh, noes!

"However, if writers and artists believe their works may be illegal, they will tread more carefully, erring on the side of caution."

If only you had some kind of specific, legally enshrined protection for just that situation. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?...

Call it what you will...

it's censorship.

We have enough already.

This must be stopped, here and now, or it WILL spread further, on the back of the dailymailtard's cries of "Won't somebody think of the children!" and "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear!"

Bollocks.

Good law, well-defined, end-of

I thought "extreme porn" was fairly specific:

(a) an act which threatens a person’s life,

(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,

(c) an act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse,

(d) a person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive).

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_pornography">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_pornography</a>

These acts are all unacceptable in civilised society. It's a good law. Bring it on.

The worst part

...is this idiotic idea was proposed by a prudish old woman and a blind man.

Yeah. They are both REALLY going to have a great perspective on this aren't they.

I'm not kidding.

Ah the complications and meanings...

What I like about this law is that you are perfectly legal to say watch a horror movie that contains scenes of mutilation or forced restraint for example SAW I, II, III, IV etc.... but you cannot take a still from said movie and be in posession of it on your computer or in printed format (ignoring copyright issues obviously...)

Lovely, I see this law and another to give a carte blanche to pin something on pretty much everyone.

Anyone thinking of emmigrating?!?

voat - mines the one with a copy of Bizzare in the pocket (cos this law would probably outlaw some of the stuff in there too)...

couldn't resist

"slip in the back door"

is that a case for the police to investigate ?

Paris as she doesn't like people slipping in the back door.

Like the campaigners...

I'd like to know what parts of my collection would contravene the new policy. I'd e-mail it to them one item at a time for comment, if it weren't for the fact that by the time I was halfway through, they'd be thinking they were being DDOS'd....!

Keep 'em scared, keep 'em in line.

We're obviously not as easy to control now we know the terror threat isn't as bad as they wanted us to believe so they have to keep us scared with something else.

"careful what you read, it might get you arrested" without actually clarifying "what"

'Bout Time

Imagine a developed country besides the US dealing with this rot! You can take the whole lot of puritans back if you'd like them. We're certainly tired of them here.

Cheers

tee hee hee

we all have about another four months to give our dirty books collection the once-over before we metamorphose, on the vinegar stroke of some as yet unspecified midnight

@Andrew Thomas

Are you seriously suggesting that the courts and the police use the Whackipedia.org article as a guideline on how to interpret the Law.

You must be joking!

Man am i glad i don't live there

Re: Good law, well-defined, end-of - Andrew..

.... Andrew Andrew Andrew.... tututut...

Whilst I agree with your definition of unacceptable things the law in question is more to do with the possibility that the picture in question could have been taken whilst causing someone harm. The grey area, for example, is pictures of someone in a light (or otherwise) BDSM scenario but the important part is that ALL PARTIES IN SAID PHOTO ARE CONSENTING to both the photo and the acts being portrayed. The holder of that photo would be breaking the law, not to mention that the people in the photo could be done for bodily harm etc... even if the people being "harmed" have no intention to prosecute, there are plenty of cases out there already on this one. The new law would add yet another layer to beat (pun intended) the "criminals" with.

Penguin cos you're not allowed to with him either....

@Andrew Thomas

This act bans peircing porn... some people actually like getting peirced during sex. Some like to watch someone CONSENTUALLY being peirced during sex.

Then there's art itself, which often depicts things that are socially taboo for very legitimate reasons.

I'm gonna take Sarah Bee's invite and flame you, for to be as stupid as you there's no other possibility - you are Jacqui Smith.

Would you like your nipple peirced while we're here?

@ Andrew

We already know that the Government has no problems forcing prosecutions on people for completly consenting sexual activities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spanner). Now it will become illegal to own a picture of a legal act. Just what we need.

How many people that read this have been tricked into seeing the goatse image?

"(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,"

If you can fit a football in it I reckon it could constitue serious injury.

Now would you be willing to hand your computer over to the police and be utterly sure that there is nothing on it that might fall foul of a badly worded, vague attempt to criminalise even more people? How sure are you that you have never looked at an act that may risk someone life? You might not have done it with your dick in your hand, it might have just been a prank a friend pulled on you. The law doesn't care. You are going to jail.

Lets not forget where and how this law came about. A very nasty individual did some nasty things and rather than blaming him, or the mental problems he suffered from, a knee jerk attempt to blame it on the stuff he looked at arose.

What happened to plain old crazy? Why does it always have to be the bands they listened to or the porn they looked at?

Doug Stanhope said it best when he claimed "You can pass any law if you have a picture of a dead kid" Counts double if the dead person was hot.

ohh and can we have a death of civil liberties type image please?

Anyway I'm done ranting. I'm of to the pub.

Freedom of expression?

Leave the definitions vague enough, and you can hit anybody and anything with it.

I can't see Brown doing anything about this - one tiny undemocratic change of leadership and the puritans are in through the back door (now there's an image).

Looks like we can kiss goodbye to freedom of expression while we're on...

Paris - if you have to ask you don't need to know...

*shakes head* (not that one, you filthy minded barstewards)

as soon as i can afford it, i'm getting the hell off this island and going somewhere less of a police state, i hear east germany is much nicer these days...

Nebulous Definitions - @ Andrew Thompson

a-d are pretty straightforward in themselves, as long as you don't get into the entire "appears to be" bit. E.g. you take a mobile phone pic of your mate on his stag night, pissed up and shagging one of those inflatable sheep - is that covered under (d)?

So. Is "Girls with Guns" covered? Strictly speaking, yes, as lives are *portrayed* as being threatened. But in reality? We don't know. It'll all depend on who decides whether the portrayal is "realistic" and who decides whether it is realistic or "offensive / disgusting / obscene".

"Fairly specific"? Not at all. It's all going to be judg(e)ment calls, and the results will be entirely subjective based on the interpreter. When our legal "professionals" are split as near to 50-50 as you can get with 5 people, it doesn't bode well.

Offensive?

"grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character"

Will the Beeb be placed under sanctions for recording the Prime Minister's questions and shipping then to C-SPAN on the western side of the big pond?

@ Murray Pearson

"Not without poppers we cant"

Fucking class....

re: Good law, well-defined, end-of

Well you have a lot of "or seems to". To whom must it "seem" to be sex with a corpse? My gran? Yours? My 5 year old nephew? Judge Judy? Madonna?

Pictures of what may SEEM to be an illegal act should NOT be illegal. They may be enough to warrant investigation to see if the "may seem to be" is "is". BUT NOTHING MORE.

Equilibrium

...is a very good movie along these exact lines, but taken to the absolute thought crime extreme. Rebellion against such appalingly repressive government is indeed necessary, here's hoping Jacqui Smith is the first up against the wall when the revolution comes - oh no, i just imagined someone being shot, arrest me!

@ Andrew Thomas

I quite like my unspeakable acts, thank you. I am not really into pornography myself but if someone wants to watch a BDSM scene, I am perfectly fine with that. I find it deplorable that the government is trying to legislate the nations sex lives. Soon they will be criminalising us for thinking about it. If the man I am with consents, then I will do whatever gets our rocks off - I will not stop and say "Hmm, you know, darling - the government doesn't approve of me choking you while we are at it on top of the garden shed dressed in spandex so let's not do it anymore."

Also, here is some loving for Sarah Bee. <3

Twenty Questions for the Ministry of Justice

It is too long to post in this comments page, but if you go to http://www.seenoevil.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=803 on the Backlash forums you can read a letter that I wrote to Harry Cohen MP (the only Labour MP with the balls to stand up to this ridiculous law) asking him to get Maria Eagle MP and the Ministry of Justice's answers to some very pertinent and relevant questions.

I sent it on the 18th of July and Harry Cohen acknowledged it a few days later. As yet, however, there has been no response from Maria Eagle or the MoJ...

@ Andrew Thomas, plus comments

AT: I thought "extreme porn" was fairly specific:

AT: (b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,

Okay, since nobody else will stick their head in this particular lion's mouth, let me ask: is fisting "likely to result in serious injury to a person's anus"?

To answer my own question, no it isn't Fisting sometimes results in very serious injuries but these are to the colon, not the anus proper, and are alarmingly often linked with the use of crystal meth. Ergo, fisting porn is not extreme porn.

But I have full faith that Ms. Smith, prudish control-freak bitch that she is, would say "yes it is, yes it is, yes it is, because I say so, oooooh, how awful, how obscene, one pervert inserting his/her hand inside another pervert's bum!"

[I am reminded of the nonsense the Andrea Dworkin crowd ("all intercourse is rape") spewed when asked about boy-boy porn and why it objectified women.]

A more general comment: isn't there some kind of legal principle that you're innocent if the law under which you are charged is so vague an average citizen couldn't tell if he was violating it or not? I'm waiting for lots of people to challenge the validity of these police state laws on the grounds that they are unconstitutionally vague, Ms. Smith's twisted knickers notwithstanding.

Cripey, here I live in distant Canada, and even I despise that woman. <vomit> Where does she get her power from? Does she have a safe full of incriminating pictures of Brown, perhaps? Or did she and the late and not so great Tony have an Interesting Connection? If so, did Dear Cherie take a part too? Now *that* would be obscene!

Anyone else think Sarah Bee might make a much better Home Sec?

Additional legal principle: English law is founded on the principle that statutory law merely spells out what everyone already knows in their hearts to be The Law. Statutory law is a mere dotting the i's, crossing the t's, and filling in the details.

@ Mike Richards

Mike, your imagination is worrying.

The image you bring to mind is so disturbing I can't stay up to browse El Reg any longer, but have to retire to a darkened room to seek oblivion.

Please reply with your full name & address so my solicitors can sue you for damages for the mental trauma you have caused me to suffer.