Blog Posts
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 […]
Hatfield police celebrate first conviction for extreme porn under new laws
After an investigation by PC Ross Freeman and Hatfield neighbourhood Sergeant Malcolm Dey, along with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and BPI (British Recorded Music Industry), Glen Smith, 38, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail after pleading guilty to 22 charges of selling counterfeit CDs and DVDs and […]
Lord Andrew Mcintosh loses his fight with cancer
Baron Mcintosh died on Friday 27th 2010. A committed humanist who opposed to interference in the private lives of adults as long as what they do did not cause harm to anyone else, he spoke up in the House of Lords debate on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act. “This […]
‘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 […]
Extreme porn charges against pensioner dropped
Jane Fae reports that a man facing charges of possessing extreme pornography has had the case against him dropped. The prosecution were unable to make the case that he intended to possess the images. Although Fae believes this spells greater ambiguity as to how the law can be prosecuted, I […]