Officialdom’s attitude to freedom of sexual expression & the chequered history of the Obscene Publications Act is wittily summarised in the New Statesman by Heresiarch, @Heresy_Corner on Twitter.
The image of Canute vainly trying to hold back the inflowing sea resonates strongly because that is the way in which authorities in this country have always behaved in official attempts to to stem the tide of erotic literature and film.
Not that long ago copies of Madame Bovary and even Moll Flanders were burned on the orders of overzealous local magistrates.
The British Board of Film Classification conducts regular surveys to check that its guidelines bear at least an approximate relationship to popular taste, and usually discovers that adults are less horrified by depictions of sex and nudity than they expected.