Pornography law bans list of sexual acts from UK-made online films
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Version 0 of 1. A range of new restrictions on the type of content allowed in online pornographic films made in the UK has been introduced by the government. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said the changes were being made to try to crack down on material “harmful to minors”, but critics described the move as “arbitrary censorship” and said online viewers would still be able to access content banned in the UK by watching videos filmed abroad. Introduced on Monday, the changes to existing regulations will ban a list of 10 sexual acts, reported to range from aggressive whipping to strangulation. It means that paid-for online pornographic films must now adhere to the same rules as content produced for hard-copy DVD films sold in sex shops. While the changes took some by surprise because of the absence of any major campaign, the government said the Audiovisual Media Services Regulation 2014 removed uncertainty from the regulatory framework covering video-on-demand services and provided the same level of protection online that existed on the high street. Acts that would fail to meet an R18 rating under guidelines laid out by the British Board of Film Censors are now prohibited, while material for which the BBFC has issued an R18 classification must not be included in an online film unless it is behind effective access controls which verify that the user is aged 18 or over. A spokesperson for the DCMS said: “The legislation provides the same level of protection to the online world that exists on the high street in relation to the sale of physical DVDs. “In a converging media world these provisions must be coherent and the BBFC classification regime is a tried and tested system of what content is regarded as harmful for minors.” However, Jerry Barnett, the founder of the anti-censorship campaign Sex And Censorship, said there appeared to be no rational explanation for most of the R18 rules, which he described as a set of moral judgements designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British people from watching pornography. “It’s a set of weird and arbitrary censorship rules decided between the BBFC, the police and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service),” he told Vice. Others claimed the legislation would impact more strongly on areas of the pornography industry where female workers have sought to challenge established practices and traditions. The erotic film director Erika Lust told the Independent: “With this legislation, the UK is in danger of finding itself back in an age where porn is simply the boring, unrealistic, male fantasy of bimbos eagerly pleasing men as if it is their duty, where women are submissive and lack ownership of their sexuality. Women in the industry will now fear the loss of their livelihoods as well as their sexual independence.” Myles Jackman, a campaigner and lawyer with expertise in obscenity law, said the introduction of the restrictions signal the beginning of “a new phase in a sustained campaign of internet censorship which has wide-reaching consequences” beyond the production and consumption of pornography. In a blogpost he wrote: “Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die. If this assault on liberty is allowed to go unchallenged, other freedoms will fall as a consequence.” Jackman said he was particularly concerned about an “underlying intent” to allow undesirable foreign websites to be blocked by the filtering systems of UK internet service providers. This had immeasurable implications for freedom of information and net neutrality, he said. • This article was amended on Wednesday 3 December 2014. Jerry Barnett’s quotes are from Vice, not Vice News, as we said originally. This has been corrected. |