more porn

A little more on the governments latest little increase in censorship. By the governments own numbers this measure is not wanted:

Respondents answered the question "Do you think the challenge posed by the Internet in this area requires the law to be strengthened?"as follows:1

	No	Yes	Not Stated	Totals
Individuals	223	90	0	313
Organisations2	18	53	13	84
Totals	241	143	13	397

1Those who answered ‘no’ to this question were typically against the proposals, those who answered ‘yes’ were in
favour of the proposals. A few answers were inconsistent with this trend; for instance some answered ‘yes’, and
explained they thought some new law or action was needed but then went on to express concern about the
proposed offence. In these small number of cases, their response was analysed and a notional ‘yes’ was entered if
they chose options 1, 2, or 3, and a ‘no’ was entered if they chose option 4 (‘do nothing’) or otherwise expressed
their opposition to the proposed legislation.

2‘Organisations’ indicates all responses not from individuals: this includes police forces, campaigning groups, charities, religious groups, professional bodes, government, and regulators.

Some people will argue that the availability of porn will lead to more people committing sexual violence. It won't. The available data is quite explicit. The availability of porn does not lead to sexual violence, it actually decreases the incidence of it.

The incidence of rape in the United States has declined 85% in the past 25 years while access to pornography has become freely available to teenagers and adults.

Not good enough? How about in the land of tentacle sex?

Within Japan itself, the dramatic increase in available pornography and sexually explicit materials is apparent to even a casual observer. This is concomitant with a general liberalization of restrictions on other sexual outlets as well. Also readily apparent from the information presented is that, over this period of change, sex crimes in every category, from rape to public indecency, sexual offenses from both ends of the criminal spectrum, significantly decreased in incidence.

Most significantly, despite the wide increase in availability of pornography to children, not only was there a decrease in sex crimes with juveniles as victims but the number of juvenile offenders also decreased significantly.

There will also be the argument that porn stars are all somehow forced into it, rather than doing porn because they get a kick out of it and like the money. This is not about non-consensual sex, which you might have realised is already a crime with stiff penalties, it is about people viewing porn that was probably made in a completely consensual way and could well have been made by the viewers themselves. Push the production and viewing underground and the chances of real non-consensual acts being involved increase considerably. It will also mean than owning works of art where it is known absolutely that everybody involved consented and nobody was harmed will be illegal, a point made by Frank Fisher in The Guardian

Well, any image that is pornographic, and involves violence that appears realistic and would result in death or serious or disabling results. Something like this would appear to fit the bill.

That's from Hitch's Frenzy, probably his most gruesome and sexually explicit killing, but of course the Master had dozens.

Think that is far fetched? Well how about this case of the police demanding sections of a book containing the works of respected photographer Robert Mapplethorpe be removed and destroyed from a university library after copies of some of the images inside, to be used as part of a thesis, where forwarded to them.

I will leave the final words to Frank Fisher

Nope, the Net is free, and governments don't like that. So the Net must become Evil and Dangerous, in order that the peepul will accept control.