The Minister for Global Porn.
The latest Criminal Justice bill is a hotch potch of planning law, provisions for educating 15 year old girls in a ‘secure environment’ incarcerated with several hundred young men, and a bid for world domination in the Porn market…..the earlier clauses are possibly so sleep inducing that you didn’t notice the plan to reduce the national debt by ‘licensing the global porn market’.
Baroness Thornton, known as Glenys Thornton, is a Labour member of the House of Lords and is married to John Carr – one of the most outspoken advocates of limiting internet porn to ‘protect the children’.
The Crown Prosecution Service has been reluctant to authorise actions against hard core porn web sites under the Obscene Publication Act. They say juries do not want to convict. That being so, the answer is obvious. Remove the need to bring obscenity charges. Create a new regulatory offence. Web site owners would be required to show they had a robust age verification mechanism in place. Not having one would be a crime. This is not so very different from what we already do with online gambling web sites.
Because most of the owners of the porn sites in question reside overseas the penalties for the proposed new offence would have to be sufficiently severe to allow extradition treaties to be invoked to bring people to the UK to face trial in our courts.
Such a new law could also make clear that companies providing any sort of service in connection with the provision of an online hard core pornography web site e.g. a bank or credit card company, an advertising agency, a web hosting company or domain name supplier for that matter, would need to satisfy itself that the site was complying with the age verification law otherwise they too would be committing an offence.
Lo and behold – we have his wife asking that the government:
Insert the following new Clause—
“Licensing of foreign pornographic services”
(1) The provider of a foreign pornographic service is guilty of an offence if the service is not a service licensed by the appropriate licensing authority.
(2) An application for a licence to provide a foreign pornographic service—
(a) must be made in such a manner; and
(b) must contain such information about the applicant, his business and the service he proposes to provide, as the appropriate licensing authority may determine.
(3) The appropriate licensing authority may require an application for a licence to provide a foreign pornographic service to be accompanied by a fee if such fee is payable in accordance with a tariff approved by the Secretary of State.
(4) The Secretary of State may for the purposes of subsection (3) approve a tariff providing for different fees for different classes of foreign pornographic service and for different circumstances.
It could almost have been written by John Carr himself, d’you not think?
It requires that in order to avoid a ‘six month prison sentence’, our grubby foreign porn provider (foreign being defined as outside the European Union!) must not only pay the Secretary of State the appropriate fee, but must ensure that his material cannot be viewed by those under the age of 18 within the United Kingdom – otherwise the long arm of the ‘Minister of Global Porn’ will reach out to Uzbekistan or Shanghai province or wherever he resides and extradite him to the UK…where he will face the full force of our new victim centred justice system. Should be fun to watch.
Lord Beecham, another Labour peer, who has yet to ‘find the right woman to marry’ supports this amendment – and another intriguing one.
“Disregarding certain convictions for buggery etc: making an application on
behalf of another person”(1) In section 92 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (power of Secretary of State to disregard convictions or cautions), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) A person may make an application under subsection (1) on behalf of another person if that other person is deceased.”
Whilst those who are falsely accused of a sexual offence against a woman will continue to find that accusation, baseless as it may be, on the Police National Computer and thus showing up on any enhanced criminal record checks, Lord Beecham wants a blanket removal of the names of those actually ‘convicted under homophobic laws in the past’ for buggery against the under 21s removed from the record of the estimated 59,000 who are now dead. Those convictions have already been removed from the record of 16,000 men who are still alive.
Any suggestions for who should be the Minister for Porn and collect those fees? Will Oscar Wilde get a post-humour pardon?
- johnnyrvf
July 23, 2014 at 12:02 pm -
I thought we were in the month of July. Surely these people spend some of their time in the real world? How on earth do the CPS or Police extradite a Russion Porn King? Does Baroness Thornton really believe this is rational well considered legislation? It is a pity there is no criminal offence for deliberately being a complete twit.
- Robert the Biker
July 23, 2014 at 12:19 pm -
Perhaps the new Minister will require an assistant; I volunteer to be the bOOb assistant!
- Joe Public
July 23, 2014 at 12:25 pm -
Wouldn’t it be fun to watch all MP’s & members of the HoL undergo ‘lie-detector’ tests whilst answering the question “Have you ever watched or search for porn on the internet?”
The results are probably a foregone conclusion.
- JohnM
July 26, 2014 at 5:57 pm -
Not at all.
Tests have shown that good liars are unlikely to be ¨found-out¨ by a lie detector.
Since politicians lie for a living……………….
- JohnM
- Moor Larkin
July 23, 2014 at 12:54 pm -
“Web site owners would be required to show they had a robust age verification mechanism in place. Not having one would be a crime. This is not so very different from what we already do with online gambling web sites.”
So presumably, given that all my occasional and generally light-hearted ventures into i-Pornland seem to generate a hidden window of a “Poker Site” within a few seconds of browsing in, then all my googled Porn sites are 100% legit…. Phew, that’s a relief…
- Fat Steve
July 23, 2014 at 12:55 pm -
The ‘Grown Ups’ in our Country just soooo love control over everything and everyone —but I do find it distasteful that the government should seek to raise licensing fees out of porno —not sure why logically and I hope I am not a prude —it just seems there might be something of a disconnect between Government which should (?) promote civic virtue rather than profit from what many might see as private vice albeit one which most consider relatively harmless. If revenues were spent on curbing abuses in the porno industry (in production not just distribution) I might change my mind but the chances of that are probably minimal —-it will be jobs for the ‘Grown Ups’ who will be paid to pontificate is my best guess
- Moor Larkin
July 23, 2014 at 12:57 pm -
There’s a drugs revolution underway in the USA, led by Colorado licensing Cannabis. The State revenues are…. enormous. other States are following Colorado’s lead. Follow the buck.
- Fat Steve
July 23, 2014 at 1:39 pm -
No thanks Moor I would rather follow virtue in so far as I am able to identify it —following the buck often leads to places I don’t want to arrive at.
- Moor Larkin
July 23, 2014 at 1:49 pm -
Those who seek to follow virtue seem to find themselves often following the lead of the Vice Squad.
- Fat Steve
July 23, 2014 at 1:56 pm -
Only those who think the Vice Squad know the direction in which virtue lies. —Personally I am less certain the direction in which virtue lies than I am the direction in which it is unlikely to lie
- Fat Steve
July 23, 2014 at 2:11 pm -
Mind you Moor some thought virtue lay in the direction Savile pointed to —others now think its Starmer or Harman who point the way.—gotta say I haven’t been convinced by any of them –perhaps the achievement of virtue in the first instance has more to do with not doing harm rather than anything more positive —-with the mindset of doing no harm one might then think oneself capable of possibly doing good
- Fat Steve
- Fat Steve
- Moor Larkin
- Fat Steve
- Peter Raite
July 24, 2014 at 2:25 pm -
I suspect the legislation has less to do with collecting licensing fees from compliant pornographers, as creating a legal framework to go after the bulk who aren’t.
- Moor Larkin
- CF
July 23, 2014 at 1:10 pm -
I suspect they won’t bother trying to extradite anyone: instead anyone in the UK visiting such sites will be prosecuted as “encouraging or assisting” the commission of the actual statutory offence, and probably also “making” unlicensed material by displaying it on their screens.
- Fat Steve
July 23, 2014 at 3:26 pm -
@CF –you are probably more accurate than you think –possibly legislation may require the acquisition of a licence in order to access porn sites —the end user supplies the revenue —like cigarettes alcohol and VAT
- CF
July 23, 2014 at 3:54 pm -
Under a regime forced by the Government in response to pressure groups (think of the children!), you already have to verify your age with mobile Internet service providers in the UK, and soon all of them, if they think the site has adult content. Not porn, just something for which you have to be over-18, or is considered troublesome for under-18s (self-harm sites), as determined by fairly sloppy analysis of the incoming site date, or the usual badly-maintained blacklist. I’ve had trouble accessing wine review sites, for instance (alcohol!).
- CF
July 23, 2014 at 3:58 pm -
” the incoming site date” I meant to type, “site data”
- CF
- CF
- Fat Steve
- Engineer
July 23, 2014 at 1:13 pm -
Well, that should increase the National Debt nicely. The budget to enforce that will need to be colossal. Extraditions from every nation on the planet, prisons being constructed left, right and centre.
Sex is a natural act. It’s necessary for the reproduction of the species. It’s pleasurable (usually).It’s a powerful natural urge, especially among the newly sexually mature. It’s also so hedged about with morality and thou-shalt-nots that it’s become a subject of wonderment and intrigue. Hence porn. As usual with almost any subject, some people take it too far.
I wonder whether a bit of straightforward education about sex, desire, sharing intimacy and pleasure, and relationships might be more effective, and more cost effective, than trying to shut down sources of information, however dodgy. I gather that sex education, whilst better than the complete absence I enjoyed at school (except behind the bike sheds with purloined copies of Mayfair), is somewhat variable in British schools, and sometimes comprises little more than a demonstration of how to put a condom on a banana. Better to give sound information than give virtually no information, then shut down the few sources of (admittedly rather dodgy) material out there. It might save a few bananas for their intended purpose as food, too.
- Jonathan Mason
July 23, 2014 at 5:05 pm -
Sex is a natural act necessary for reproduction? Well, yes, it is but the vast majority of sexual activity seems to be wasted, and activists like the Pope just want to make it more efficient, like Margaret Thatcher who only had sex once and produced two children.
But you are somewhat right that trying to put controls on pornography only makes it more alluring. Rather like putting skirts on piano legs to avoid arousing the men, or how women tend to look sexier in bikinis which are designed to draw attention to the mammary and genital zones on a clothed beach than on a clothing optional beach, and as for women in a burkha–whoa, check those sexy eyes!
- Engineer
July 23, 2014 at 5:29 pm -
The point I was trying to make is that educating children about what porn is would be more likely to have lasting beneficial effect than trying to ban it from them, and thus making it (as you say) more alluring. Both parents and schools have some responsibility here.
By the way, not that it’s particularly relevant to the current debate, but can you prove that Margaret Thatcher only had sex once?
- Jonathan Mason
July 23, 2014 at 5:43 pm -
Re Thatcher. No, but it is an interesting thought. Anyway she seems not to have become pregnant again as far as one knows.
- Engineer
July 23, 2014 at 6:00 pm -
Hmm. Given the high standards of factual analysis set by the landlady, perhaps we mere commenters should try to maintain similar standards. Given that her marriage was a long and (as far as one knows) broadly happy one, the idea seemed a little far-fetched.
- Jonathan Mason
July 23, 2014 at 6:02 pm -
It was just a joke, for goodness sake.
- Jonathan Mason
- Engineer
- Jonathan Mason
- Engineer
- Jonathan Mason
- Joe Public
July 23, 2014 at 1:27 pm -
Ha! Perhaps our landlady could offer an expert-opinion as to whether the entire UK population might then be guilty of “Living off immoral earnings”.
- EyesWideShut
July 23, 2014 at 1:29 pm -
Like it, Anna – Will Oscar Wilde get a post-humour pardon?
I think the laughing stopped a long time ago with this New Crusaders’ mentality. Yes indeed, we are going to go forth to Greenland’s Spicy Mountains and India’s Immoral Strand or where ever this stuff is coming from and … and … and ….
We’re not even going to stop licensing the sale of arms to Russia and that is something we could do right now if we really believed our own rhetoric.
Displacement behaviour.
- Eric
July 23, 2014 at 1:37 pm -
The Americans will tell them to shove it under freedom of speech. Places like Russia, Ukraine and Indonesia will ignore it. Idiots.
- myykk
July 24, 2014 at 2:50 am -
The amendment has been rejected by the government. Dead – for the present.
- myykk
- Moor Larkin
July 23, 2014 at 1:39 pm -
@ Lord Beecham wants a blanket removal of the names of those actually ‘convicted under homophobic laws in the past’ for buggery against the under 21s removed from the record of the estimated 59,000 who are now dead. @
Be interested to know if that might lead to a posthumous pardon or two of David Smith the chauffeur who never drove for the BBC and had never met Jimmy Savile, and despite being well used to being in prison for sex offences, ended up suiciding anyway the day of his court date with Alison Saunders of the CPS in 2013.
“After he was dead, we got to know much moor about this otherwise unknowable man. With the lifting of reporting restrictions we discovered that David Smith had no less than 22 prior convictions!! He had even been in prison as recently as 2002, when he received a seven year sentence. He had first been in prison as long ago as 1966!! I worked out that David Smith would have been 19 in 1966; I also recalled that any homosexual acts whatsoever were illegal in 1966. So far as I can tell, from reading all the reports I could find, all of David Smith’s 22 convictions are associated with male victims.”
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/the-strange-death-of-liberal-england.html- EyesWideShut
July 23, 2014 at 1:56 pm -
Well, this is just another reason we are in such a mess nowadays. Of course, at various points over the last few decades, homosexual acts were either completely illegal, or the age of consent varied and. I think some people would secretly like to go back to the pre-Woolfenden regime, but that’s just my gut-feeling.
The other day I suddenly remembered that millenial series “Queer as Folk”. I have a vague idea that it featured a character who was 15 and went around seducing older men. He was presented in a broadly positive light, IIRC: naughty but nice. I have no opinion either way, because I find it hard to think in absolutes, but it seems to me deeply strange that in the space of 10 years we should have gone from a celebration of freewheeling sexual buccanneering to a nervous predispostion to see nothing but “abuse”, “trauma” and “evil”. There is some elite social control going on here, i can tell you that.
- Moor Larkin
July 23, 2014 at 2:00 pm -
The most controversial aspect of the series… [is] …the seduction of the 15-year-old Nathan by the 29-year-old Stuart. (When the program first aired, the age of consent was…18 for gay men)
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/deviation.html- EyesWideShut
July 23, 2014 at 2:05 pm -
I was pretty sure it was the little guy himself – or put it like this, he was a bit of a raver. There was some “controversy” , sure enough – but nothing like what the makers of the series would get now, I suspect.
I often look back in amazement at what was aired 20-30 years ago – “The President’s Brain is Missing” in which it was just taken for granted that US Presidents were crazy and so were Communist First Secretaries. There was so much more scepticism around in the MSM.
- EyesWideShut
- Mr Wray
July 28, 2014 at 12:18 pm -
There was a time when gay comedians, some of whom are now rich and famous, would make jokes about sex with under-age boys. Now they are more circumspect. Is that a not good thing?
- Moor Larkin
- Jonathan Mason
July 23, 2014 at 3:21 pm -
Absurd. You break the law at your peril according to what is the law at the time and where you are. If you want to have sex with a girl of 15, you can go to France or Spain and try to find one. If you had homosexual desires at the time it was illegal, that was OK as long as you did not act on them. If you acted on them you broke the law of the time and should be punished according to what the sentence was at the time. If you want to smoke marijuana, you go to Amsterdam. If you want to drive a car at the age of 15, you go to the USA.
That is the law, majestic, immoveable, impervious, illogical. Take that away and you have anarchy.
- myykk
July 24, 2014 at 2:48 am -
Implement subjective laws, and criminal laws based in strict liability, and nobody knows if what they do is illegal or not.
- myykk
- EyesWideShut
- Alexander Baron
July 23, 2014 at 1:41 pm -
Another article about Operation Yewtree here
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/17515414-the-innocent-victims-of-operation-yewtreeI wonder if these idiots would also consider legislation to stop airheads like this woman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAMwyyybA7I
helping implant false memories in vulnerable people by endorsing “The Courage To Heal”.
- Rightwinggit
July 23, 2014 at 2:29 pm - Joe Public
July 23, 2014 at 2:38 pm -
‘Pornography’ – anything the less-prurient finds slightly erotic.
- Engineer
July 23, 2014 at 3:28 pm -
I suppose Silvio Berlusconi would make a good Minister for Porn. Or Minister of Porn. I’m sure he’d be all in favour of making it global, too.
- Richard
July 23, 2014 at 4:14 pm -
The proposed legislation suggests that:
Definition of a foreign pornographic service
(1) A service is a foreign pornographic service if—
(a) the principal purpose of the service is the provision of still images
or audio-visual material which is pornographic;
(b) it includes pornographic material which depicts in an explicit and
realistic way—
(i) penetration of the vagina or anus of a person with a part of
the body or anything else;
(ii) oral sex;
(iii) masturbation;
(iv) ejaculation;
(v) urinary or excretory function;
(vi) acts of restraint or violence of threats which are associated
with sexual activity;Now apart from (v) above where someone is taking the pi55 (sorry – couldn’t be helped), what happens if this is taken up by other countries.
Would a reciprocal arrangement with, say the increasingly prurient Australia, lead to the BBC being required to apply for a pornographer’s licence?
Think about some of the programs broadcast…
- Moor Larkin
July 23, 2014 at 4:30 pm -
“Would a reciprocal arrangement with, say the increasingly prurient Australia, lead to the BBC being required to apply for a pornographer’s licence?”
Mary Whitehouse just giggled…
- Ho Hum
July 23, 2014 at 8:12 pm -
So did Dame Edna
- Richard
July 24, 2014 at 12:12 am -
Mary Whitehouse just giggled…
So did I – at least not out loud. I don’t really remember much about MW but I do know she was unpopular with the intellectual elite at the time.
- Ho Hum
- Moor Larkin
- Jonathan Mason
July 23, 2014 at 4:46 pm -
Surely the proposed pornography law is more likely to be applied to Internet providers. They can screen out unlicensed Web sites or pay the price. In the USA it is already the law that a registry must be kept of proof of age documention and that the holder of the records must be published, so this legislation massively helps US providers of pornography, while shooting down cowboy operations in poorly legislated jurisdictions or war zones such as Ukraine
This seems to be part of a general trend worldwide. For example the Dominican Republic has come under pressure from the US over issues of brothels and trafficking and the Dominican Republic is now closing down prostitution related businesses like clubs and bars that are owned by foreigners and in some cases deporting the foreigners (mostly Germans, I think) . Some of these places had been very blatant and one even had a menu on its Web site, e.g. sex with one girl $60, sex with two girls $100, one hour $60, all night $200 and so on. Now it is shuttered and the Web site is blanked. Prostitution is still legal, but pandering or making a living from promoting it or promoting the country as a sex tourism destination, no sir, we don’t want no bananas!
Like a dead parrot, this brothel has ceased to be except in obsolete Web pages like this.
- myykk
July 24, 2014 at 2:46 am -
The amendment has been rejected by the government. It’s dead – for now.
- myykk
- Ho Hum
July 23, 2014 at 7:03 pm -
Our Lords and Masters will undoubtedly exempt themselves again. We can be sure that there will be no restrictions in the bar for the more Honourable Members,
- Joe Public
July 23, 2014 at 11:09 pm -
Purely for “Research Purposes” [ Pete Townshend], of course.
- Joe Public
- Backwoodsman
July 23, 2014 at 7:58 pm -
Lets make a futile gesture ! If you are a serious music downloader, there are any number of Napster type sites available at any one time to chose from, despite hype about closing them down. Similarly, if you are a serious porn dog, there are numerous free sites available for the cognocenti.
Stable doors and all that. - Backwoodsman
July 23, 2014 at 8:03 pm -
I should possibly point out that I know the above to be the case, because the large rugby related forum that I am a member of, frequently has posts listing the respective merits of various sites in both categories I mention !
- Ho Hum
July 23, 2014 at 8:10 pm -
That’ll be the ‘In the Dark’ net, then?
- Ho Hum
- myykk
July 24, 2014 at 2:45 am -
This amendment to the bill hasn’t got government support and so has been withdrawn by it’s sponsors. Thornton and Beecham’s proposed amendments to bill clause 28 are even more totalitariian – they would massively broaden the scope of the material caught by the new law. All BDSM images would almost certainly be illegal to posses. Beecham is not just some fruitcake nobody, he’s a fruitcake somebody – a Labour justice spokesman, so potential Labour voters should be aware of what may come down the pike in this area from master Milibean if he reaches no 10 next year. For now the government have rejected those amendments to clause 28, so they’ve gone for now too.
- Kevin
July 24, 2014 at 12:18 pm -
What are we going to do with 180 million Japanese prisoners?
What on earth makes the government think they can legislate for every other country in the world? Blair’s government tried to include porn on the European arrest warrant, but the rest of the EU threw it out.
- Peter Raite
July 24, 2014 at 2:41 pm -
There seems to be an undercurrent of hand-wringing in this report that, “The vast majority of new broadband customers in the UK are opting out of ‘child friendly’ filters when prompted to install them by service providers.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28440067
An uptake rate of only 1 in 7 (14.3%) might not look good, unless you take into account that only around 30% of households actually contain dependent children.
- CF
July 24, 2014 at 7:55 pm -
I’ve got dependent children, but I wouldn’t switch ISP filters on either (or I’d switch them off if there). They do not work well, either way.
It’s the wrong approach and the wrong level, but the Government was told that and wouldn’t listen. (They don’t even seem to understand that Google isn’t “the Web”, let alone “the Internet”, just an index into it: things are stored all over the world.)Indeed, the children tell me of many incidents at school where they can’t access or the teachers can’t show them something proper and certainly legal because some filter gets in the way. “Blocked!” (“But when I used it at home, it was fine!”)
I did set Google SafeSearch when they were younger, because accidental use of a double-entendre in a search is the main way anything naughty is going to show up unbidden on a machine, and frankly I don’t see anything outrageous when I’m searching, with it switched off.
There are some exceptions (usually mistyped domain names).Facebook, Google+, YouTube etc all take account of ages for certain material, and that seems to work reasonably well.
- CF
July 24, 2014 at 8:03 pm -
As regards the article, I believe one of the providers mentioned is most responsible for loading all manner of dubious (ie, debilitating, privacy-compromising) salesware onto their customers’ machines as part of their connection package CD. It took me a good while to restore a friend’s machine to good running order, mainly by deleting it all. I left the extremely dangerous application the company had provided that can give them direct access to the customer’s machine, because I wasn’t sure whether they might have trouble getting support if I removed it.
- CF
- CF
- Mr Ecks
July 24, 2014 at 8:44 pm -
It seems like they are trying to ape the Yanks again.
Just as the US Federal tyranny’s obnoxious financial FACTA bill uses the Fed’s muscle to force foreign banks to comply with obnoxious Fed laws (in practice the overseas banks are dumping US customers ) this porno crap will simply mean that foreign sites won’t accept membership applications from UK customers. So the neopuritans hope. As for extradition–unlikely. The UK pukes will have their faces laughed in by assorted foreigners. The idea that although they can whisk our people out on any ludicrous accusation means that we can do the same……naw–it don’t work like that.
OT Anna–can I pick your brains one more time. I would like to get hold of transcripts for the Hall, Clifford and Harris trials. As a lawyer–can you tell me the best way to go about that?. I tried the web but there is a lot of guff about Crown Courts /£780 a day fees and Judges permission. perhaps you can clarify?.
Thanks
- tango
July 26, 2014 at 5:09 am -
Would be interesting indeed to see transcripts of the Hall, Clifford and Harris trials. I have my doubts about the Clifford case and fear there may have been a miscarriage of justice here. As for Rolfie IMO at most deserved fine or suspended sentence. I have grave doubts about motivation of at least one of the alleged victims. Clifford case, similar.
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