Articles
Anti-censorship across the political spectrum
This week, Mark Wallace, Executive Editor of ConservativeHome, explains the practical implications of an Internet porn filter for personal privacy. He argues that filtering will inevitably involve monitoring all of everyone’s internet use, since porn isn’t a well-established category of material easily divided from other content: The only way to […]
So-called ‘Rape porn’ ban would be another threat to sexual freedom
Myles Jackman, legal adviser to Backlash, criticises the nebulous justification of ‘cultural harm’ for banning the mere possession of staged depictions of rape in an exhaustive legal article on his blog. In a key passage, he discusses the failure of prohibitionists to distinguish between fantasy rape scenarios and real acts […]
Ripper Street’s extreme porn as tittilation
Danny Broderick over at Freedom in a Puritan Age describes how a new BBC television series, Ripper Street, broadcasts images that, in a different context, would be illegal even to possess. An important point emerges from this situation. It is clear that legislators didn’t really think that the availability of […]
Plebgate: blame the laws, not Mitchell or the police
A nasty sting to the incident that forced Andrew Mitchell to resign from the Cabinet was that he swore at a police officer, and that members of the public could easily expect to be arrested for such behaviour. By not being arrested on the spot, Mitchell was already being shown […]
Nichi Hodgson: Bound to Love
Nichi Hodgson’s real-life account of becoming a professional dominatrix, Bound to Love, is reviewed over at the F-word. It attempts to provide a realistic picture of BDSM to accompany the fictional account, Fifty Shades of Grey. It also challenges blanket conceptions of sex work as degrading and destructive to women’s […]
Banning sex work: the non-evidence base
Activists are gearing up a campaign to ban sex work in Scotland, with the explicit intention of protecting women engaging in sex work. Laura Lee has an enlightening account of the Conference Against Human Trafficking held in Glasgow. She was one of only two sex worker advocates to attend, and disagrees […]
Employment-based censorship
Via Sarah AB at Harry’s Place and BenSix, we learn of a case of a man being demoted for posting a comment on Facebook opposing gay marriage. There may be more details in the story that have gone unreported relating to something more justifiably akin to misconduct. But if this […]
Rowan Atkinson argues for Repeal of Section 5 of the Public Order Act
World-renowned actor and comedian, Rowan Atkinson, makes a humourous and strong case for repealing Section 5 of the Public Order act at a recent parliamentary reception. Section 5 of the UK’s Public Order Act 1986 has several parallels with the ban on extreme pornography. They permit prosecutions of harmless and […]
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 […]