"When does kinky porn become illegal?"

BBC News looks at a new UK law banning "extreme pornography":

A bill outlawing the possession of "extreme pornography" is set to become law next week. But many fear it has been rushed through and will criminalise innocent people with a harmless taste for unconventional sex.

Five years ago Jane Longhurst, a teacher from Brighton, was murdered. It later emerged her killer had been compulsively accessing websites such as Club Dead and Rape Action, which contained images of women being abused and violated.

When Graham Coutts was jailed for life Jane Longhurst's mother, Liz, began a campaign to ban the possession of such images.

Supported by her local MP, Martin Salter, she found a listening ear in then home secretary, David Blunkett, who agreed to introduce legislation to ban the possession of "violent and extreme pornography".

This was eventually included in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which gets its final reading this week and will get Royal Assent on 8 May.

Until now pornographers, rather than consumers, have needed to operate within the confines of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act (OPA). While this law will remain, the new act is designed to reflect the realities of the internet age, when pornographic images may be hosted on websites outside the UK.

Under the new rules, criminal responsibility shifts from the producer - who is responsible under the OPA - to the consumer.

But campaigners say the new law risks criminalising thousands of people who use violent pornographic images as part of consensual sexual relationships.

People like Helen, who by day works in an office in the Midlands, and enjoys being sexually submissive and occasionally watching pornography, portrayed by actors, which could be banned under the new legislation.

She feels the new law is an over-reaction to the Longhurst case.

"Mrs Longhurst sees this man having done this to her daughter and she wants something to blame and rather than blame this psychotic man she wants to change the law but she doesn't really understand the situation," says Helen.

"Do you ban alcohol just because some people are alcoholics?"

She has an ally in Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer, a Liberal Democrat peer who has fought to have the legislation amended.

...

Baroness Miller says the new law also threatens people's privacy.

"The government is effectively walking into people's bedrooms and saying you can't do this. It's a form of thought police."

She says there's a danger of "criminalising kinkiness" and fears the legislation has been rushed through Parliament without proper debate because it is a small part of a wider bill.

Deborah Hyde, of Backlash, an umbrella group of anti-censorship and alternative sexuality pressure groups, has similar concerns.

Read more here.

Comments

[Sam]

It'll be interesting to see how it's construed under the construct of the UK's Human Rights Act...