Blog Posts
UKIP politician removed for filming sex games
Via liberal conspiracy, we learn that a UKIP politician in Liverpool has been suspended for making a number of amateur films with themes of sexual violence. Whether the films could be considered explicit enough to be deemed ‘extreme porn’ is not mentioned. There is no indication of police involvement in […]
Stephen Guest – The right to obscene thoughts
On Tuesday 8th December 2009, Professor Stephen Guest at the UCL Faculty of Laws, gave a speech opposing the recent ban on the possession of extreme pornography. He argues that genuine freedom of expression requires the protection of all manner of thought, including the obscene. The video of his lecture […]
Sex censorship v freedom
This video was made at the annual conference of the Libertarian Alliance, Liberty 2009, at The National Liberal Club in London on 25 October 2009. Myles Jackman, legal affairs adviser to Backlash, discusses the dangers of the current prohibition on “extreme pornography” and some possible future attempts at censorship on […]
Crying out loud
The Crown dropped their first test case for using the Obscene Publications Act against writing published overseas on the internet, in alt.sex, by a person domiciled in the UK. Arrested in February 2008 after being reported by official vigilantes the Internet Watch Foundation and charged that October, Darryn Walker finally […]
Consent and harm
Law made on the back of a single issue campaign is often 'bad law' and it is my belief that s.63 misses nearly all it targets." says Andrew Murray, Reader in Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, in an article in the Modern Law Review. He […]
CPS advice
The Crown Prosecution Service have to agree to any prosecution. The advice to CPS staff amplifies some definitions. They also took the trouble to read through the relatively small amount of debate in Parliament. "Although the Act does not state what a serious injury is, prosecutors must be aware that […]
ACPO statement
ACPO (the Association of Chief Police Officers) lead on Extreme Pornographic Images, Jim Gamble, Chief Executive for CEOP (the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) issued a statement (in full here) that included "the new criminal offence of possession .. reflects the potential damaging impact that the possession of this […]
Call to arms
The Convention on Modern Liberty on 28 February 2009 included contributions from CAAN – covered by Ally Fogg in the Guardian “When the personal becomes political” and by Clair Lewis herself in Heresy Corner – plus John Ozimek for The Register on the panel Internet Censorship in the UK (AVI […]
Better late than never
The Reading Evening Post, the local paper of Mrs Longhurst and Martin Salter MP, for the first time provided an even handed account of the issue on 15 Jan 2009, quoting CAAN’s Clair Lewis. Mrs Longhurst concludes ” I don’t know how much they are willing to spend enforcing this […]
Remote searches of hard drives
The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith discussed remote searches of computer hard drives with her counterparts in September 2008, which could become quite relevant for the extreme image legislation. Spy Blog has a suitably acerbic view.