All Episodes
Previous Next
March 17, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
10:08
The UK Porn Licence
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
There's no particular reason that you should remember that back in 2013 the Conservative government was going to block all online pornography by default.
Literally every single house with an internet connection was going to have to choose to opt in to see pornography.
Why would we make the government the arbiter of our pornography?
Well, for the kids, obviously.
The internet is not just where we buy, sell and socialise.
It's where crimes happen.
It's where people can get hurt.
It's where children and young people learn about the world, each other and themselves.
The fact is that the growth of the internet as an unregulated space has thrown up two major challenges when it comes to protecting our children.
David Cameron's plan seems to have fallen through in 2013, but by 2014 the Conservatives were back at it again.
In December of that year, they decided that they would simply just ban a long list of sex acts arbitrarily, apparently over a set of moral judgments.
Well that's all well and good you might say.
These acts were obviously totally inappropriate, even done by consenting adults, and no one should possibly be able to see them at all.
Well, you'd be wrong.
The list of banned acts appears to follow absolutely no rhyme or reason, except for the fact that it was drawn up by some incredibly prudish people.
Included on the banned list are spanking, caning, aggressive whipping, penetration by any object associated with violence, physical or verbal abuse, regardless of consensual, water sports, role-playing as non-adults, physical restraint, humiliation, female ejaculation, strangulation, face-sitting and fisting.
Why?
What on earth is objectionable about female ejaculation?
Obviously, we were never given any explanation as to why these things were banned.
Now, the question wasn't whether people could get hold of these things, because obviously, given the nature of the internet, they can.
So what the Conservative government did was ban porn makers in the UK from making porn that included these acts.
So really, all they're doing is regulating Britain out of the porn market, which is a strange thing to have to be kind of free marketeer about, but at the end of the day, that is actually going to affect the economy.
But I do concede that this is a very strange hill to die on.
According to Jerry Barnett of the anti-censorship group Sex and Censorship, there appears to be no rational explanations for most of the R18 rules.
They're simply a set of moral judgments designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British people from watching pornography.
The list seems to be bizarrely punitive towards female sexual expression as well, as most of the sex acts that were banned focus on the female participant in the act itself.
And I really have to stress that all of these things are consensual, but that doesn't appear to matter to the Conservatives who apparently find them rather icky.
So it was rather amusing when a few days later there was an unironic face-sitting protest outside of Parliament, where yes, sex workers and campaigners got together to sit on one another's faces.
And of course, one thing that you notice by looking at the pictures of the protest is that many of the protesters are female sex workers, women who are arguing for their liberty to perform their job in the way that they want.
And the protesters at the time obviously noticed that these laws do have a kind of sexist bias in them.
They're very sexist laws.
They're very geared towards women's enjoyment as opposed to men's.
And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, well, who the hell has the authority to tell me that I can't film myself sitting on a lover's face and then sell it to people?
Well, the Conservatives.
They are trying to protect the kids.
Don't you know that they were doing everything in their power to prevent your child's childhood from being corroded by online pornography?
Which is why it was somewhat ironic that the deputy head of the policy unit that thought up this policy was accused of watching child porn.
And the Conservatives' war on you having a wank did not end there.
Fast forward to May 2018, and we were informed that we were going to have to buy porn passes in order to watch pornography and new laws that they were drawing up.
As The Verge reported, Britain approved the Digital Economy Act of 2017, which included strict new rules regarding access to pornographic websites.
When the law goes into effect later this year, regulators have suggested that users will be able to purchase a so-called porn pass from their local newsstand to verify their age.
The law will require websites to verify the ages of users or face stiff penalties.
Those who don't comply risk being blocked by internet service providers or would face fines of up to £250,000.
However, the implementation of the rules had been delayed to give the British Board of Film Classification more time to draft its guidelines.
Once it does so, the new guidelines will require approval from Parliament.
And that was the last that anyone heard of it until March this year, when it was confirmed that at the beginning of April, yes, they would indeed start rolling out the age verification porn licenses, because you need to ask the government's permission to have a wank lest your children happen to see some porn on the internet, because apparently you are a terrible parent and you can't be responsible with how your children access the internet.
This is finally being applied, but it doesn't just apply to pornography.
As you can see, the Digital Economy Act of 2017 has a much greater reach than just pornography.
But if we look at part three, which is the online pornography section, we can at least take a look at their reasoning.
For example, they describe pornographic material as material that was produced solely or principally for the purposes of sexual arousal.
That is a reasonable definition of pornography.
While part of this act is indeed to restrict access to pornography to people who get their porn license, that's not the only thing that it does.
Another part of it is to restrict extreme pornographic material just universally, so no one has access to this.
Well, what do they think extreme pornographic material is?
Because I have a funny feeling that the Conservative government and the rest of the country might have a slight difference of opinion on that.
So I bet this is very clearly defined, isn't it?
From section 3, parts 22, the meaning of extreme pornographic material.
In this part, extreme pornographic material means whose nature is such that it is reasonable to assume that it was produced solely or principally for the purposes of sexual arousal and which is extreme.
Good summary.
Good summary.
Thankfully, they actually define what extreme means.
For the purposes of subsection 1B, material is extreme if its content is described in section 637 or 7A of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
It is grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character.
Well, doesn't that just put my mind at rest?
Because it turns out the Digital Economy Act is an extension of the 2003 Communications Act, and it's the 2003 Communications Act that introduced the concept of gross offence into British law and contains the only single reference of it to my knowledge, which is in section 127, which is uploading grossly offensive content to the internet, which was what Count Dankula was arrested under.
Now we have a second example of something that constitutes being grossly offensive, and we are left with the exact problem that we had the first time around, which is who decides what grossly offensive actually means.
Are we really leaving it to a bunch of Puritan conservatives to define grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise of an obscene character?
Now, maybe I am just some filthy degenerate who has had the internet for far too long, but I do not consider them to be grossly offensive, disgusting, or otherwise obscene.
I don't even view them as being very extreme in and of themselves.
This isn't protecting children.
This is enforcing the Conservatives' puritanical view of sex on the rest of the country.
I know this isn't really the hill anyone wants to die on, but do you want the government regulating your sex life?
Because it begins here and it keeps going.
We have seen a consistent pattern of censorship of pornography from the Conservatives, and we have absolutely no reason to think that they're going to stop.
And of course, this isn't even going to work, because obviously, firstly, VPNs exist.
But secondly, this is only being applied to vendors, at least initially, as far as I'm aware.
So if people are selling pornography online, they will be subject to these rules and potentially fined by whatever regulator is set up to enforce these rules.
However, this won't apply to pornography that is freely available on the internet.
And honestly, when was the last time anyone paid for pornography?
I don't think I've ever paid for pornography, so this is not something that concerns me in the slightest.
But I really don't think that the government should have the ability to restrict on their own personal moral standards the legal porn acts I could previously watch and enjoy if I wanted to.
I don't see a problem with any of the porn acts that we've banned in 2014 on the face of them if they are done by consenting adults, which their regulation did indeed include.
I don't see why I should have to ask the Conservative government for permission to watch pornography they don't like.
I don't think the government is going to help any children with this.
I don't think it's going to prevent them from viewing online pornography because I think they will find ways around it.
But I think what this will do is provide the government yet another avenue and excuse to meddle in your private life.
I would have thought that a general rule of thumb to which we could all agree would be not allowing the government to have any control over our sex lives as long as what we were doing was being done by consenting adults.
▲
Export Selection