A new section in the UK Criminal Justice Bill could well criminalise a large proportion of the British male population.
Clause 63, which focuses on "extreme pornographic images” could well see the millions out there who regularly use the internet to view pornographic images suddenly viewed as criminals in the eye of the law.
Thought police
The Register reports that on Monday 21 April, the Criminal Justice Bill returned to the House of Lords for further debate, where Lib Dem peer Baroness Miller attempted to remove the extreme porn clause.
Baroness Miller claims that the evidence linking pornography with violence and that "the Minister is in danger of leading his Government into becoming the thought police... we do not have any evidence to justify an intrusion in people's lives".
She added: "the Government's contention is that by viewing it [extreme porn] people are more likely to commit violent offences. Therefore, they justify walking into people's bedrooms and turning them into criminals simply for viewing something."
Prudish government
Lord McIntosh of Haringey added: "What does it matter to the Government whether what we have in our homes for our own purposes is for sexual arousal or not? What is wrong with sexual arousal anyway? That is not a matter for Parliament or government to be concerned about."
The report adds that up to two million people could have such images on their computers, often unknowingly, which “raises the spectre of police unable to prosecute someone on another unrelated matter taking a peek at their hard drive to see if they can get them for possession of porn.”
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Your comments (3) Click to add a new comment
grahamm
April 30th
3. I am one of those who have been fighting these ridiculous proposals since the start. It is clear that our Government does not trust us to behave like reasonable and sensible adults, they think that if we see this material we're going to do nasty things, so the Nanny State is going to say "we think this is bad for you, so we're not going to let you see it".
Not only that, it will be someone else's *subjective* view on how an image *appears* that will determine whether you are committing an offence, you may not even know if you've broken the law until someone else says "that image is grossly offensive and I think it risks someone's life or might cause them serious injury".
There is still the possibility of getting this ludicrous law thrown out, everyone needs to write to their MPs NOW via http://www.writetothem.com and tell them that they don't was want to see a Thought Crime introduced into British Law.
For more details and counter arguments see the Backlash site at http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk
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thehesh
April 25th
2. sounds inherently stupid to me and cant see it getting passed by the house of Lords!
i remember being taught 'innocent until proven guilty' and not assuming all are guilty until proven otherwise. has this been lost from our justice system???
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zoydwheeler
April 25th
1. Who makes up this shadowy Internet Watch Foundation then? Most male adults I know most likely have such questionable images somewhere in the depths of their hard drives...
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