Porn Laws Make Comic Books And Doodles Illegal
IS it pornographic to draw a picture of something pornographic?
“Yes,” says Australia.
And Britain agrees. Comic books are porn. Cartoons can get you in trouble. Who knew?
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act and Coroners and Justice Bill, will make it an offence to possess “extreme pornography” – defined as any “extreme image” produced “solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal”.
Right now, a paedophile can carry around drawings of depravity and child abuse and be in the clear. The Coroners & Justice Bill will end that.
An “extreme image” is any “grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise … obscene” graphic a “reasonable person” would think beyond normal.
A popular fan-operated Web site, comicshopvoice.co.uk, has issued a statement:
“A kick in the balls or (posterior) would constitute this, and a kick in the balls is a well trodden part of humor.”
See: Nightmare On Fleet Street: Action And Battle In The Comic Books
Adding:
“Because this is a minefield for the law it then falls on the Police to enforce it, and it is their judgement that could lead to a prosecution.
“We COULD get to a point where the police could legitimately visit your home or workplace, and sanctioned by an un-elected magistrate or judge go through your collection and if they find any comic book that they feel will cause sexual arousal or displays extreme violence then they could arrest you.”
It continues:
“What is frightening about this law is that it gives [the Government] carte blanche to invade our lives, to shut down our comic shops and ultimately it could lead to censorship of books and films as well.”
The Telegraph explains:
Films given an official classification are exempt from the new law, meaning portrayals of such extreme activity by actors will be allowed on screen. However, imitations by characters on paper will not enjoy such an exemption.
So storyboarding an actor getting a good kicking or sexually assaulted will be illegal but filming it will not be?
And what of adolescent doodles on toilet doors? Will the cubicle be taken down and offered in evidence?
Meanwhile, in Free Iran…
Posted: 1st, February 2009 | In: Key Posts, Politicians Comments (8) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
January 3rd, 2013 at 8:44 pm
These are the signs that censorship is going overwhelm us. It always starts with porn, then moves to other areas which are considered offensive. Once the state has this power it will spread till no one will have the right to speak up against tyranny. Only the all powerful and absolutely corrupt elite will have access to this and if anyone does find out, he will be put down like an animal, no one will be able to speak up about this ever again. The governments have outsourced censorship, so that the blame should not fall on them.
February 7th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
hi
free celebrity feet picture
http://www.feetceleb.com
February 1st, 2009 at 11:07 am
so it’s back to Naughty Nanny and the Hockey Mistress
February 1st, 2009 at 1:58 am
Mark
I did a couple of rants about this a few weeks back about people possessing manga being criminalised, and noting that, for example, Neil Gaiman could be prosecuted under the ludicrous laws in the US for his Sandman comics. There is a
brilliant article on his website
‘Why defend freedom of icky speech?
‘Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.’
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html
There is also a support group for people threatened by this ludicrous attemp to class them as pornographers at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, donations always welcome…
January 29th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
There are actually two laws here. The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 criminalises images depicting so-called extreme pornographic images of adults – even if of consenting adults, and even if it’s all staged. This law has passed – as of Monday 26 Jan, anyone in possession is breaking the law, and can get 3 years in prison. See http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ and http://www.caan.org.uk/ for more details.
The Coroners and Justice Bill will criminalise sexual cartoons (or any kind of image) that looks like someone who is under-18 (yes that’s right, 18, not 16). So if your Japanese hentai looks like they might be under-18, you’ll get three years in prison too. The law even says that images depicting adults will be illegal,
if “the predominant impression conveyed is that the person shown is a child despite the fact that some of the physical characteristics shown are not those of a child”. So drawings of adults doing school-uniform role-play? Or anime with youthful looking characters?
See http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmbills/009/09009.25-31.html for the bill.
It’s currently going through Parliament, so there is still time to write to your MP…
Moderator we don’t normally allow more than one link , but its obviously not spam
January 29th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
[...] Porn comics – update, with Batman… [...]
January 29th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Is this the end for the ubiquitous ‘Spurting Cock’?
I hope not. Many a lost soul has booked into a lonely hotel intent on suicide or worse only to be snapped out of their depression by the sight of one on the fly leaf of a Gideon.
January 29th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Personally, I’d be more worried about the many people getting their (non-sexual) jollies from torture-porn films like Hostel and Saw.
In the eighties my then girlfriend and I bought a book called ‘The Poem of The Pillow: The Japanese methods’ by Gabriele Mandel ( cover image on Amazon here
http://www.amazon.com/poem-pillow-Japanese-methods/dp/B0007BWJKQ
) along with Sir Richard Burton’s translation of Vatsayyana’s Kama Sutra. The Poem…is out of print now, but was a quite scholarly and serious examination of The Pillow Book, complete with contemporary woodcuts.
Now the Japanese male then (if not now) was obsessed with phallic size, so all the woodcuts showed men with comically massive members being carried by bearers, in wheelbarrows; and, yes, engaged in intercourse.
Some of these woodcuts could be described as portraying activities likely to injure a person’s sexual organs or anus – part of the extreme porn legislation (according to The Register articles on the subject). The book itself was not intended for sexual gratification, but the original woodcuts obviously were. If I still owned this book I could quite possibly be done under this bizarre and unwieldy new law. What a f*king joke. Or it would be if it were happening in a work of fiction.