UK citizens, are you aware that from the 26th January this year, you may have become a de facto criminal?

I’m not referring to that bag of weed hidden in your sock drawer, nor the drunken theft of those road signs a few years back. No, what I am referring to is hidden on your computer, in a folder within a folder; it’s probably got some nondescript name such as ‘Tax Stuff’ or ‘Word Documents’. Ladies and gentlemen, I am referring to your pornography collection.

The last time your solo-surfing material got you into trouble it was probably with your mum or your girlfriend, and you may well have been 15-years-old. But now the government is poking its long nose in where, quite frankly, I’d rather they didn’t.

Sections 63-67 and 71 of the United Kingdom Criminal Justice and Immigration Act on the possession of extreme pornographic images now dictate that it is an offence to possess certain images.

There are several key areas where this legislation poses cause for concern.

For example, ‘life threatening’ and ‘serious injury’ are not defined anywhere in the act; it is left to the judge and jury to decide whether an image counts as such. So would a shallow bleeding cut inflicted with a knife count as ‘serious injury’? Consider that anything that breaks the skin would be enough for an Actual Bodily Harm charge, as opposed to the less serious Battery. What about somebody with their hands around someone’s neck in an asphyxiation scenario? Truth is, you don’t really know until you’re on trial, which is not going to help your defence.

Moreover, the images do not have to be ‘real’ to be eligible under the legislation. Fake wounds count, as well as fake weapons and staged scenarios, as long as they are ‘realistic’ and ‘explicit’. If you own any BDSM pornography in which all the participants have given their consent and in which careful control has been exercised during production to make sure no-one is hurt, well, that’s illegal too.

So, what are the penalties?

That’s pretty serious when you consider that it is likely everybody involved consented of his or her own free will. But wait, there’s more.

Your image that did no lasting damage to anyone has just landed you on a list of pedophiles and rapists, which can seriously damage your future prospects.

The UK legal establishment has long been overly harsh on consenting practitioners of BDSM, as the infamous R v Brown case continues to show. It remains to be seen how much money and time individual police forces are willing to spend perusing prosecutions in these cases, especially when you consider that the majority of ‘offenders’ are unlikely to pose a risk to society.

So why bother? The law was a reaction to the case of Jane Longhurst, a teacher who was murdered by a porn-obsessed psychopath. Jane’s mother, Liz, has publicly lobbied Parliament to ban the images that she believes contributed to her daughter’s death. However, this thinking seems flawed, as put by Clair Lewis of the Consenting Adult Action Network:

Source.

CAAN predicts the laws will lead to “harmless criminals and victimless crimes.” The UK is sleepwalking into a 1984 culture, with our sleazy politicians introducing reactive legislations through the back door for popularist appeasement, and it is people like you and me who will suffer for it.

For information and advice about this issue please visit Backlash-uk.org.uk
Click HERE for a Government circular on the legislation.