Rape porn to be illegal

[RiotsNotDiets]

here

About bloody time!

Yay!

Not sure I'm keen on the filter (I am undecided) but banning rape porn is fantastic. It should have been done ages ago.

What's the idea behind "Warning pages to pop up with helpline numbers when people try to search for illegal content"? How does that work - is it for people to report illegal content they have found or is it for paedophiles, etc, to get help?

Thankfully.

Chances are all porn will end up being filtered and anything that could be seen as porn will be blocked. And the kids will be around it in about 30 seconds. Being interesting to see if they ban facebook as it has adult content including rape imagery. And of course no american company will have follow suit as they are protected by the first amendment.

Sex Advice will probably be blocked, if it is an automated system the first few months will be very interesting and it is unlikely that it will really have much affect.

Do we have a Tory Prime Minister who actually cares about people? I feel dirty even asking, but I can actually respect some of the stuff that DCam has tried to do in this Parliament. Right, off for a red hot shower with some bleach

I'm assuming the helplines would be for people with violent or predatory sexual urges? So they can ring up and talk it through to avoid acting on them, kind of like having a buddy at AA?

I could be completely wrong though.

Illegal in England and Wales - it's already illegal up here, thank god.

Also, I bought a mobile internet dongle a couple of years back from Vodafone. It has 'adult content' filters in place as a default. This included Youtube, so I will be interested to see how they manage to implement this.

So far every actual means of filtering the Internet that I've ever heard of was an incredibly blunt weapon. In the name of keeping out the really bad stuff, they have to keep out all sorts of harmless material; I would guess that a lot of people quickly feel that they're being treated like idiots, and turn the thing off. So any time I hear about proposals for Internet censorship, my first thought isn't "At last, we need this" but "How badly will this work?" So I want to hear the details before I start applauding.

Well reading that porn will require opt in Mumsnet Towers may have to work a bit. No embedded pictures of mens bit in chat. No linking to images that could be construed as porn (mens bits). Also linking out to sexual health advice may be risky. Be interested to see what happens to sites that have links to images judged by someone as porn. Links out that run into opt in material does the site linking need opt in as well?

Would be funny if mumsnet ends up needing opt in to read the boards.

I think its a good idea, I did ponder though what about people who have rough sex fantasies, etc being kidnapped will that be under the same heading hard to define really isn't it.

No issues with rape porn being banned over here.

Good thing and puts us in line with scotland, and the laws for net the same as the laws for other media.

Will movies like "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" or "Irreversible" be banned or cut under those proposals? Both depict rape scenes at length and detail for entertainment purposes.

All of the proposals re porn and internet filters sound incredibly myopic and badly thought out - it will not only affect access to porn, but also info about sex ed, abuse etc, and therefore the people hurt most by it won't be porn users, but victims, who can't use the web anymore to search for help.

Ditto the ridiculous idea of filtering for websites on self harm, which inevitably will include websites for self help with these issues will be blocked.

Who the fuck did they consult with (apart from talk talk who got quite a lot of free advertising for their free filter services today...)?

I don't know anything about the technical side, but at least it's sending oit the right message.
I suppose it will be on a par with child porn. There if you want it but in no way acceptable.

Sinister - "I don't know anything about the technical side" - this seems to be the main theme. People not actually understanding what they're asking for.

Stavvers explains it all very well here

Thanks Widow I have read that thread.

It won't solve the problem, no, but I do still feel that the message being sent out is a good one.

I am sort of wringing my hands saying Well somebody simply must do something. Because that bit is true. And if all that can be done is a sort of anti-normalisation, I am ok with that. It's that or nothing.

You do wonder if rape support websites will get issues with the bans.

Should the lad mags websites be classified as porn even though no genitalia is shown? They will have to either employ a lot of people to make judgement calls or leave it to machines which will have big issues because it will work exactly as it is programmed. The knock on effects could hurt a lot more people than the men who want porn and opt in. And sites outside the UK will be a nightmare to police.

As to the rape issue will GoT not be available on line through sky? or will all of sky programming be blocked because of one show?

There is a good chance that the Daily Mail site would be blocked based on its current content. Karma.

Patriarchy ensures that the world's great minds will not be focused on overcoming the technical problems that currently exist with internet filters.

Bloomin' patriarchy. Grrrrr

Yes, it all sounds jolly technical and a bit tricky......best leave images of men raping women for pleasure unchallenged, then.

Quite.

The thing is, how about starting all this with some good old-fashioned parenting? Filters on devices at home, parental locks, inbuilt Windows security (curfews, time limits, children's accounts etc etc), home PC's in family areas.

Oh, and it appears that the Government has cut the CEOP budget, so they have less money to attend schools and educate people. Brilliant sleight of hand, hiding this under the headlines.

There seems to be a bit of confusion here. There are at least three quite separate things being proposed:

1. Rape porn being made illegal

2. Greater measures to catch and deter child abusers sharing images etc. online

3. ISP filters to block legal porn

There is no technical problem at all with making rape porn illegal. What is being proposed is an additional clause to S.63 of the 2008 CJA.

From Wikipedia:

Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 is a law in the United Kingdom criminalising possession of what it refers to as "extreme pornographic images". The law was enacted from 26 January 2009. It refers to pornography (defined as an image "of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal") which is "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character" and portrays "in an explicit and realistic way" any of the following:

-An act threatening a person's life
-An act which results (or is likely to result) in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals
-An act which involves (or appears to involve) sexual interference with a human corpse
-A person performing (or appearing to perform) an act of intercourse (or oral sex) with an animal (whether dead or alive)

and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that any such person (or animal) was real.

The term covers staged acts, and applies whether or not the participants consent. Classified works are exempt, but an extract from a classified work (if the image was extracted for the purpose of sexual arousal) would not be exempt. Whether an image is "pornographic" or not is up to the magistrate (or jury) to determine by looking at the image; it is not a question of the intentions of those who produced the image. If an image is held in a person's possession as part of a series of images, the question of whether it is pornographic is also determined by the context in which it appears. Therefore an image might be legal in some contexts but not others. Serious injury is not defined by the act, but is up to the magistrate or jury. Guidance on the bill gives examples of acts which would be covered: depictions of hanging, suffocation, or sexual assault involving a threat with a weapon; the insertion of sharp objects into (or the mutilation of) breasts or genitals.
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So what is being proposed is to add pornographic depictions of rape to those other four. This won't affect Rape Crisis's website, lad's mags, GoT or anything else which isn't rape porn.

There are massive technical problems policing it, as there are with child abuse images, but not with making it illegal.

ISP filtering of legal internet porn is a whole separate issue which is already being discussed on several other threads. It is riddled with problems (and yes they are technical, sorry) and it's my belief that it will leave us worse off than we are now in terms of protecting children. Kaloki/Murder's blog explains these problems in simple language for those who want to understand.

I have a question about this and I think I'll probably get flamed, so I want to make clear that I haven't formed an opinion on this yet and i'm just interested to know what others think.
I've read a few times that there have been studies done in to the sexual fantasies of women, and repeatedly rape and simulated rape have come out quite high on the list of the 'top' fantasies.
I'm not sure whether the same kind of studies have been done with men or whether rape/simulated rape was as high ranking for men.
I imagine that all of the women questioned would be horrified at the idea of actually being raped, or of any other woman being raped but none the less were turned on by the idea of simulating it.
So my question is, does 'rape porn' glamourise rape and violence against women? Or, if the women in the pornography are consenting (and I know that's a contentious issue in itself) then does it give adult people who fantasise about forced intercourse an outlet for their sexual desires?
And if this is the case then why is that harmful? Is there any research to indicate that accessing such pornography would lead to an esculation of these fantasies or lead to them being acted upon?
Obviously where children are concerned, viewing such material would be incredibly harmful to them and there is no way that the act portrayed should be considered normal sexual behaviour but, amongst consenting adults, is the fact that we find the portrayal of rape for sexual gratification distastful enough of a reason to ban it?