Author: Nick
An example of better focussed speech regulation
Via Crime and Consequences, we learn that the US president has just signed the ”Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010”. The law is in response to a successful appeal by a company that was distributing images of extreme animal cruelty. Though not targeting the same material as the ban […]
Fear of the Imaginary
A common theme in sex censorship legislation is the desire, or at least willingness, to stamp out depictions of fictional events. For example, the anti-pornography provisions in the recent Coroners and Justice Bill were first mooted because of a loophole that was being exploited in some child protection legislation. Some […]
Facebook and the closing of the digital mind
While Governments can use the force of law to stifle expression on the Internet, they are far from the only threat to free speech. Tim Berners-Lee, one of the original creators of the World Wide Web, highlights the increasing use of closed Internet architecture, spearheaded by companies like Facebook and […]
Deadly silencing
The tragic deaths in recent weeks of Gareth Williams and Kristian Digby show the tremendous human costs that are associated with the culture of shame surrounding alternative sexual practices. According to some reports, Williams had a fetishistic interest in claustrophilia (an erotic response to enclosed spaces) while Digby engaged in […]
Malcolm Hutty on new threats to Internet freedom
. laconf2010. Malcolm Hutty, Freedom and the Internet from Sean Gabb on Vimeo. At last week’s Libertarian Alliance conference, Malcolm Hutty, head of public affairs at the London Internet Exchange, discussed how the Internet has brought tremendous freedoms to individuals. He also outlined how state and corporate interests can collude […]
‘Extreme concern’ – new academic critique of extreme porn law
Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith provide a measured critique of the ban on extreme pornography in a recent article for the Journal of Law and Society (currently available without library subscription). They analyse the rhetorical devices used to generate public anxiety about viewers of extreme material. They also show how […]
Dentist pleads guilty to ‘pain porn’
A man in Dorset has pled guilty to possessing several extreme images and videos of acts that, so far as we are aware, were exclusively conducted by consenting adults. It is far from clear that the images satisfied the real definition of extreme pornography (merely painful activites are not covered […]
Extreme porn charge dropped due to Backlash intervention
A poorly founded extreme porn charge, tenaciously pursued for many months by the Crown Prosecution Service, was dropped last week. The man was able to contact Backlash who put him in contact with expert legal advice on how to deal with the charge. He was able to vacate his guilty […]
‘Extreme porn’ found on phone
A Sunderland man has admitted possession of a short video clip of male genital mutilation on his mobile phone. He was warned that he could have faced a jail sentence had he forwarded the image along to anyone else. The clip was sent to him by a friend. This is […]
Scottish Parliament passes “extreme porn” law
This week the Scottish Parliament passed its own version of the ban on “extreme porn” as part of the wide ranging Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill. “Extreme pornography” in Scotland includes a potentially much wider range of images, prohibiting possession of depictions of non-consensual sex besides the categories already present […]