Yeah. The criminal mind sure is a straightforward, easily explainable thing. No room for grey areas in the grey matter, no sireee. Just as well, really: it makes the reigning middle classes' day to day moral existence that much more cushy and tolerable, don't it?

*turns off sarcasmatron and goes to kitchen to make a serious sandwich*

Agreed. Unfortunately when victims parents ask for laws that may enable us to better protect our children from paedophiles for example (i.e.a version of Megan's law), we get the answer "well, the problem with something like that is..." which always make me think it's their country too and they are kind of in charge so aren't they responsible for figuring out something better knowing that so many people want it?

/rant

You got it terrifyingly on the head there.

Porn and legal pot? Canada here I come!

Don't pack your bags just yet... wait until Stephen Harper has been voted out of office, dismantled, and stored back away in whatever lab created him.

Harper may act like he runs the country but hasnt actually done or implemented anything yet that will piss off too many ppl, it's like he is afraid to push the button on anything except the softwood lumber deal and that may end up costing him his job as he has put it to a confidence vote.

He is like the exact opposite of Bush in that way, when Bush got elected it was do every crazy thing he wanted, but because of our system up here and the fact Harper dosent hold a majority goverment he has to Tip Toe around, so it's not tooo bad right now.

I'm sure this is infringing on my Human Rights , i'll have a look at work tommorrow in my casebook.

Just a few quotes from the linked report:

"The intention is to reduce the demand for such material and to send a clear message that it has no place in our society."

Erm, I've never studied marketing or economics - but doesn't reducing the availability of something often INCREASE demand?

"...discouraging the possession of this material in the UK will help reduce demand for it ..."

Well I suppose this statement is correct but um, can I say 'drugs'? - 'cos a similar plan really worked there .. & you can't even download them off the Internet.

"Any new offence would apply only to
pornographic material containing explicit
actual scenes or realistic depictions of:
i) intercourse or oral sex with an animal;
ii) sexual interference with a human corpse;
iii) serious violence in a sexual context;
iv) serious sexual violence.1"

Do zombies count? I'm glad 'Repenetrator' couldn't really been seen as a 'realistic depiction'

But it pretty much acutally goes as far as to say that they want to discourage "interest in violent or aberrant sexual activity" in society. I guess that's what the goverment's for though - telling you what's normal & wrong. How else would we know?

Ban it all or none at all. Thats what I say. (meaning of course, none at all).

Now what they need to do is take all this righteous indignation and dedicate it to capturing more pedophiles, and pedophilia porn.

To quote the Leaving Trains

"Violent sex, is the only kind of sex that makes sense to me!"

I'm pretty conflicted about this issue, the whole exposure to fantasy violence and "sexual degradation" leads to violence and sexual degradation in real life issue.

1) I tend to agree with legionnaire and others in that the blame should be on the killer himself and not on violent porn per se, but, my god, there is a lot of filthy, demeaning shit out there, and maybe people do get desensitized to it. And maybe it does have the potential to do damage or at least catalyze damage for those who are most prone to it.

On the other hand:
2) Illegalizing violent porn won't stop people from watching it. Worse, placing more stigma on "non-vanilla" sexual lifestyle makes it more difficult for S&M practicioners to access information on how to play safe.

I don't really know what to make of the whole thing.

Nice to see that European liberals can be just as dumbarsed about porn as the American religious right.

Worse possibly - this proposed law is just as vague, but with posession being a crime, it's even more draconian.

What is "sexually violent"? snuff movies or just S&M fettish stuff?

And who decides these things?

I nominate Ouchy the Clown

It's very hard to connect what they are doing with what they say they are aiming for. The people at the extreme are going to continue getting it, so there'll be a chance of them getting caught. But what do you do with all the people you catch? Pack them off to prison, add their names to sex offenders list, destroy their family and employment chances? Doesn't seem like a giant leap forward, even from their point of view.

The British empire was built on thrashing boys for little more reason than to build their characters. Now people, who for some unknown reason, like to watch people in school uniforms being caned by stern authority figures will be put in the same basket as child porn users.

I do have some sympathy for your dilemma, it's similar to my own about fake child porn (drawings, stories). It's not real, so no one was hurt, but where might it lead? I tend to come down on the side of the smallest possible censorship, and for better funding of the agencies which might help, such as mental health services and social work.

middle classes? the last time I checked, the people running the country were decidedly NOT middle class.