UK 'bad' pics ban to stretch? The government could be planning to up the ante when it comes to material it doesn't approve of - it may become illegal to even look at images, not merely possess them. Some odd, ambiguous remarks by Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions, raise this gruesome possibility. Evidence for it emerged from an elliptical …
> Streaming is already covered
There is *NO* offence of "making extreme pornography", unlike the offence of "making child pornography" (which is just a weasel clause in itself that makes for better headlines).
PS @ J
"Fine and dandy. Do something, then! Bunch of Internet whiners..."
How do you know? FYI I've been a member of Backlash http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ since this so-called "Extreme Pornography" nonsense started and have written to and e-mailed MPs, Lords, Newspapers and many forums. Now I'm a member of the Consenting Adult Action Network http://www.caan.org.uk/
I only regret that, due to work commitments, I'll be unable to visit the Convention on Modern Liberty on the 28th http://www.modernliberty.net/ but you can be sure I'll be seeing what comes out of it (which will be a lot more sensible than what comes out of our Government, I have no doubt)
I'm sure, however, that a lot of posters on here have also, in their way, put their shoulders to the wheel of protest against this law, so dismissing people as "internet whiners" without any evidence seems pointless.
I strongly disagree.
An essential, core part of the job of every MP is to stop bad policy and law-making by subjecting proposals to proper scrutiny. It's their job not to be easily swayed by the lobbyists and pressure groups. They're legislators precisely to make sure, on our behalf, that bad, ill-founded laws don't get made. It's the whole, effing point of having democratically elected legislators in the first effing place!
You're basically saying: don't blame the politicians for failing to do exactly what they're paid to do, exactly what they're elected to do.
I most certainly blame the politicians. It's they're job to stop these bad laws getting rammed through parliament, but they're just not doing their job.
To be fair, though, it's not all politicians who have been failing to stop these bad laws getting pushed through. In the House of Lords, it was the Lib Dems who tried to stop the "extreme porn" law. And it's a Lib Dem MP, Jenny Willott, who's daring to challenge the "cartoon porn" proposal now. The Lib Dems are generally anti police state, anti totalitarian, though, due to their underlying political philosophy.
The Tories, sadly, are more inclined to sit on the fence, as they did in the Lords when abstaining from voting on the "extreme porn" sections of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
Basically, it's New Labour MPs who are particularly to blame. Not all of them, as there are some rebels who do try to do their job. But there are enough bad New Labour MPs that the government generally manages to just keep on pushing these bad laws through.
I'd blame the voters, but it's not like we have a sufficiently democratic electoral system for such blame to be entirely reasonable. Guess who I'll be voting for at the next election (if Brown doesn't cancel it)...
You may not have noticed but the states already has a law regarding computer generated and drawn images.
Why do you think all the girls in various games are stated as being 18 when they're obviously not?
So it's actually to late for the Americans to whine, however the law is a rather good example of how poorly these things are enforced - basically only pulled out when the filth happens to find something.
Is that they made protesting within a mile of Parliament illegal unless you have the permission of the police.... and you can bet that the police are not going to give the ok to a form that says
'We the people plan on turning up with flaming torches and pitchforks to oust this ridiculous, self-serving, undemocratic, fascist, holier-than-thou, corrupt, and above all incompetent collection of people from Government. Oh, and we'll be there till they're gone."
Which, lets face it, nicely sums up the Government of the day. We need things to get significantly worse before the common or garden citezen (like me!) decides that ignoring the Law, and going to make an illegal protest is worth it. I wouldnt be surprised if it happened before Gordon Clown calls an election - he'd do anything to keep power (because he doesn't realise that he hasnt actually got any).
"How can a drawn image have an "age" ?"
I'd ask how can a fictional child in a drawing, or a cartoon or a cgi render be classed as a 'victim' of a 'sex crime'? If the subject in the drawing is purely fictional, isn't the crime alleged to have been committed against them also fictional? How can the artist or an individual in possession of said art be classified as a 'sex offender' - who - exactly - has he/she committed a sexual offence against? Can the 'victim' be brought to Court and presented before a Judge and Jury? Can forensics provide evidence of a sexual crime have been committed?
My God, there is such a wide reality gap in this whole shabby prospect that I find it quite utterly staggering that anyone is taking it seriously... and shame on those who, for whatever reasons, are actually doing so. What a ship of fools.
>Ya know in russia during the stalin period the sight of a womans figure, even dressed in anything other than a boiler suit. Was considered counter revolutionary and not promoting the right communist message.
I didn't know that and if it was so then it must have been damned hard to police. My nearest colleague is Russian(*), you could dress her in anything from treacle to galoshes and there'd be no mistaking that she has anything less than a female figure.
(*)I'd ask her if it was true but I tend to dribble profusely when talking to her.
...that the emerging situation as-outlined clearly cries out for:
http://www.kopbusters.com
It's the running howto-laden and practical-minded re-start of Genuine Justice Done Right from Heaven that has arisen from the grass-roots of the Hell on Earth that Texas became from the deadly sneering Bush/Gonzalez malgovernance era forward. One pissed-off (because he is a Good Man at heart) plod's own Moral Compass was slammed up against the wall of a senseless, lawless and false-based drug conviction of an innocent young woman of his acquaintance; the officer himself has quite apparently indeed decided that enough is enough is enough. His make-um-right action is now online.
http://www.kopbusters.com <== Click here and REJOICE.
One could do worse than to follow the general line of action illustrated in practical plodbarassment tech there, I think. I also think a little correspondence is still possible. From the contactus page on-site:
Kopbusters
P.O. Box 809
Tyler, TX 75710
Phone: (01)1-903-841-0127
Email:i nfo@nevergetbusted.com
Hours: Noon - 8:00pm Central (US) Time, Tuesday-Friday
Find a sympathetic solicitor, my friends, and adapt the moves+tech as needed to fit a Brit legal framework nice and tight. Turn that Wacqui Jaquoff high-hand and all of its high-tech snoopy-tools against itself thereby forthwith!
Best get crackin'. That two-year timeframe for the full strangle-grip to throttle all life off the Island to corpse status that another commenter in this thread mentioned might be a bit generous, as it looks from here.
So who here wants to viddy on a man's house getting busted on a false-contrived warrant for Evil Pot when it's a really a couple of Devout Christmas Trees a-baskin' under the lights, while the live streaming cams just do their job right in realtime? Then why are you still reading this shite from ME?
http://www.kopbusters.com. Because some people still care for the Things that are True, and that is what SUSTAINS LIFE.
I do dearly hope that this tidbit helps. Civil Liberty is a terrible thing to waste while we still have a little of it.
I expect that soon simply watching videos expressing anti-religious sentiment or anti-Western sentiment will also join this list. If making multimedia content comparing Islam to National Socialism is worthy of censorship, or if making internet videos telling people to kill Westerners in the name of God is illegal, then presumably so is watching them.
Actually, why not include all videos that could inspire acts of violence against the British government (as judged by Jacqui Smith)?
If the government has good evidence to show that viewing the about-to-be banned material is harmful to the viewer, or to society as a whole, then fine. If (and I suspect this is the real truth), the government is merely banning media content because it doesn't like the topics covered, then there is no reason to expect the censorship to stop at extreme pornography.
As this is a democratic nation, the electorate has a right to know on what basis the government is passing its laws. Exactly why is some content to be made illegal (ie that which involves sexual violence) whilst other potentially harmful content (eg that which involves promoting drinking alcohol, glorifies non-sexual violence or advocates religious homophobia) is deemed acceptable? And exactly what checks and balances are there to stop a government undermining our freedom of speech by banning important ideas just because they are threatening to the government's belief system?
In the modern internet age, freedom to create and view multimedia content is supposd to be a major part of our liberal and secular democratic culture. Should we allow the nature of British censorship to be determined by the personal sensibilities of a handful of idealogically partisan, and in some cases deeply religious, Ministers?
The UK is not like an open prison, it is one.
There are more cameras and authority figures the the open part than there are behind the bars. Logical really since when someone is locked up they can get up to less mischif.
In Essex our Traffic Wardens are now Civil Enforcement Officers and wear black uniforms with stab proof vests with refective yellow signs with blue writing on them.
The POLICE (comunity support) officers wear black uniforms with stab proof vests with refective yellow signs with blue writing on them.
The (real) POLICE officers walk arround with the plastic ones and wear black uniforms with stab proof vests with refective yellow signs with blue writing on them.
They also carry Tazers and threaten to Tazer me.
The BLUE icon because I miss the days when we were protected by the men in blue rather than armed fascists in BLACK uniforms.
Unless you piss them off by not cowering to their superiority then you're OK. (Yes officer, I am sorry officer, please don't taze me) Unless that is they are trying to meet targets, then they are likely to get you for whatever crime is in fashon that month.
What is the cartoon age of consent anyway? Is an 21 year old cartoon breaking the law when it has sex with a 17 year old in the privacy of it own cartoon house? or only when it's caught on cartoon film? What about when a 15 year old cartoon sends a naked picture of their cartoon body to their cartoon friends? What about cartoon bestiality? Could shaggy shag scooby? Hmm, few dogs live til 18 so probably not. But scooby doo was made from 1969 til 2002 so he's in his 30s now right?! In which case what about Scrappy-doo? 2009-1980 would make him nearly 30 too. If they're both of legal age could they shag each other? As there's no humans involved is it even obscene? It certainly seems a bit wrong but is it legal? Gah!
It's like religion, once you accept a fucking ludicrous premise there's an infinity of questions that are very hard to answer?
I'm pretty sure this is illegal by these definitions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartman_Sucks
"Is this obscene? How about now?" - Chris Morris, Brass Eye.
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