I don't know if I'm the only one who was surprised at BBC news this evening.

First they had a piece about the banning of violent pornography. People being brutalised for others enjoyment. About how degrading and perverse it is. About how downloading it will be a crime.

Ten minutes later they are doing a piece about Ultimate Fighting in the US and showing people beating the living feces out of each other for the enjoyment of viewers. Oh yes, and details about downloading it off the internet.


Erm.... what exactly is their stance on this type of thing then? If you are going to condemn something, don't advertise it a few minutes later.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm surprized by the hypocracy..."We were never at war with Eurasia, we were always at war with Eastasia!"

By their charter, the BBC shouldn't have a position at all, so it should be impossible for them to be hypocritical. Were they actually condemning it themselves, or reporting the condemnations of others? Also, Dave, why aren't you surprised by reports of the BBC being hypocritical?

Because I have learned to not truly trust any news reports. Perhaps I am simply jaded by the U.S.'s news, but I have found that much of the news that we get from any major news source is often playing to the masses. People don't want to hear the truth so much as they want to hear their own views reinforced. Thus, the news would report that these 'perverts' who enjoy this 'terrible pornographic material' are going to be punished, but, since Ulitmate Fighting is enjoyed by a lot of people, the news doesn't want to condemn it, because that would make too many people feel bad, and there might be a backlash. All the media is PR, and unfortunately, that includes news stations.

In the first piece they had 'experts' on saying how abhorrant it is being able to get your hands on this sort of thing. Because the subject matter was vioilent and brutal they did not show any of it. I would say they must have tacticly supported this as they had absolutely no one with counter arguments, which would be necessary for a balanced opinion.

So ten minutes later they are showing exactly the same things they wouldn't before (because it's too graphic), along with details on how to get hold of it. They had a small story on how some born again Christian martial artist went into the pit, got his head punched into mulsh, and all for £50. They showed you him getting his face punched in. Now forgive me if I am wrong... but isn't that violent pornography?

Hmm, true, not having any counter-arguments seems strange - especially since counter-arguments are discussed on the BBC News website's story. And it would almost certainly be extremely illegal for anybody, let alone the BBC, to show violent pornography on TV at any time, let alone in the middle of the day.



por·nog·ra·phy (pôr-ngr-f)
n.

1. Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.
2. The presentation or production of this material.

I suppose it depends on what they were fighting with, but I'm going to go with "no", it's not violent pornography.

Hmm, alright. The definition I was working on is a medium which portrays an individual as less of a person and more of an object to elict pleasure. It's usually associated with sexual or erotic... erm... stuff but encompasses more. I got the impression it was being used in this context as the report didn't rest entirely on sexual acts.

Well, perhaps it did, I didn't see it. The impression I got from the site was that it meant "pornography" in the traditional sense.

Speaking of which, there's something I can't work out from the .net article. Are they talking about banning pictures and videos of actual people actually being harmed against their will, or are they including fakes too? The vast majority of supposed "rape" and "snuff" porn on the inter nets is faked, simply because it's so much easier than committing crimes on-camera. In the case of the former, I have no objection; in the case of the latter, it's a clear and outrageous breach of freedom of speech.

Yup. Real and fake.

Down with this sort of thing! Etc etc.


From the sound of things some MP was horrified to hear about it in a pub* and a bill was quickly pushed through. There hasn't really been much debate about it in the news. At best it protects a vunerable section of society. At worst it clampens down on freedom of expression.

Theres not really much evidence that such things have an effect on people though, outside of a very impressionable minority. It's the same arguments that have been made against graphic films and computer games for years.

I like this quote from the Beeb's website: "Mr Goggins said such images were "extremely offensive to the vast majority" and had no place in society."
That reasoning is stepping perilously close to the tyranny of the masses for my tastes.






*May not be 100% FACT.

The act seems a bit inconsistent, for example if it conforms to the r18 rules a possesor of a scene of light bondage where the sub is gagged, even though it is acted and he/she is obviously consenting, could be prosecuted but if they own manga or anime involving extreme sexual torture they can't. Not prosecuting cartoons etc makes sense if they are only trying to protect real people from harm, but considering that they will prosecute possors of the example given above in order to keep people from being corrupted it seems a bit odd. I think they ought to adjust the definition's of the r18 classification. It's good to know non porn films/books etc where those things are a plot device will not be banned and the possesors prosecuted otherwise we would loose pulp fiction!

To be honest, and perfectly frank, it sounds like a load of utter bollocks, a pathetic excuse for a law. One vital thing we've not heard is what exactly would be classed "extreme pornography", and what forms it would cover. Certain people very dear to my heart have created, in written form, things that could easily be classed "extreme pornography".

Why, simply anything that the majority find repugnant!

How they will be able to aquire this knowledge for every variation of 'violent porn' I have no idea.... maybe a door-to-door survey?

"Hello, are you the home owner? What's your view on beating someone to death with a 12 inch [CENSORED]?"

I can see that going down REALLY well.

Sex is one of those tricky pop culture issues that people in the news sort of dance around without embracing. Violence is far more accepted, possibly because people see it as a strong and independent act, while sex can be a more vulnerable time and is (except during independent mastrubation) a shared activity. Sex is everywhere in shows and ads, concealed with barely decent clothes and implications. Loads of things in the media are supposed to make you want to have sex, but they never show it fully. Put a bit of openly shown sex, porn, or violent porn on the Internet and people are outraged because it's "filthy and indecent." Honestly, society today has the oddest taboos. If people don't want to see porn, then they shouldn't go ordering it on satellite or watching it on the Internet. Some people argue that children should be protected, but that responsibility rests squarely in the parent's lap. If they want to protect their children, they should install child-friendly content filters and monitor their child's Inernet use.
Plenty of people watch porn for the same that others watch fighting- to relieve urges and fantasies that they know they shouldn't exercise on real people. Porn can be a safe outlet for people with sexual obsessions that could be dangerous to others, and banning it is likely to cause more trouble than it's worth. Watching violent porn for hours may cause some people to become violent, but doesn't alcohol make more people violent more of the time? Violent porn is being banned because it is a societal taboo that most people don't even want to hear about.
Sorry if I've ranted, don't mean to offend anyone. I just feel that infringing on one personal choice is likely to lead to infringing on more.

This doesn't really have a point and is just me being nitpicky, but isn't violence usually a shared activity too?

The difference there is that sex is consensual, while violence hardly ever is.

I can't say I'm very suprised that you find discrepancies like that in the media. At least in the US, violence is often depicted as normal, while sex is considered taboo. (For an example of that, just refer to the debate over the hidden scenes in Grand Theft Auto.) All the news programs around here compete for viewers, so they try to show viewpoints consistant with what they think people want to see and hear. Unfortunately, many people also happen to be influenced by the media as to what they think "normal" behavior is. It just never ends... Personally, I don't see how that law will do anything. What's to stop someone from just looking at porn without downloading it, or printing it? If someone were to try to stop porn, wouldn't they be better off going after the people who make it in the first place? And besides, I don't think it's anybody's business what somebody else looks at in the privacy of their own home. Sure, most people consider it disgusting, but it's not like it hurts them or violates their rights. Some things should be left to personal discretion.

So, to play devil's advocate, what about child pornography? Should it be legal to view, download, and share, but illegal to make?

So, first off, the law only targets the extremes of extremes. I found some government paper about it yesterday,
Linky Linky
which is a bit more explicit. There's also an email address at the bottom of it so you can contribute to the public debate. I will be.

That said, the argument still stands that if the video is filmed by consenting adults, then so what? Well, I can certainly see the argument for restricting access to that kind of material except through licensed outlets. Which isn't what's being proposed of course.

My biggest problem with this legislation is that if there's even a little bit of feature creep, it ends up criminalising the entire BDSM community. I mean, the whole point of BDSM is to do things to each other that are often violent and look non-consensual (despite being totally consensual).


P.S.
And Calantyr -
Surely the Beeb is merely reporting on the news - the government is discussing these laws, hence it's news. Hence, no hypocrasy. I mean, they might have a news story about speeding followed by an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard (if that were on the beeb, of course). Is that hypocrasy? Of course not.

P.P.P.S.

Taken from the document I linked to:



Serious violence in a sexual context? I've seen people who are in love hurt each other a lot, then have a big cuddle afterwards. That's what BDSM play is. It's a larger axe to grind that I have, really, about the legality of consent.

Just to be absolutely clear, my problem is with the three words I've emphasised. Remove those words, and I'm cool with this law.

This line kind of scared me:

Yuck, that's a messy issue. I would have no problem whatsoever with child porn being banned completely. If they're not old enough to have sex legally, then there shouldn't be pictures or videos of them doing that. As for actually downloading and viewing it, I'd be inclined to make that illegal. Adult porn is one thing, as it involves consenting adults. Children just aren't mature enough to give consent to something like that. And you can't get child porn without it being made in the first place, so what you can download was made illegally. I hope that cleared up my viewpoint on that.

That was worrying me as well but upon reading the document I found out text, cartoons and other similar media won't be included. It only includes film or photographs/computer created pictures that look like photoes (can't remember the right word) and they also have to have been created solely or primarily as pornography (so art or a film like performance will be left alone), which is lucky because half my friends would be arrested otherwise.



My Dad had those filters on our computer and they don't work. They wouldn't let me look at something as harmless as elfwood but did nothing about a weblink someone emailed me that turned out to be a porn site (although this was a few years ago so maybe they've improved since then).




The idea is to ban porn that was made illegally, where one or more of the participants didn't consent. However the definition does seem to include even very mild BDSM despite claiming that it wouldn't be criminalising that. A great many people do find BDSM repellant, so that would fit with what he was saying about these things being unnacceptable to society but the point is that BDSM if done right isn't done against peoples will. Laws should not be made by peer pressure. The part where owning light bondage porn on your computer is an offence does need to be edited out because this is just a way of enforcing one sexual ideal on people. If no one is hurt (not including if they want to be hurt) then there is nothing wrong with it, and quite frankly some of the adverts for phone sex in Bizzare magasine are illegal according to the document.

I don't think it's hypocracy. I bet that all forms of fighting for entertainment in the U.S is fake.