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THE LOSS OF YOUR FREEDOM
If you value your freedom of expression and the freedom of the internet then you should seriously look at what the British government has planed for you. They are going to stop you looking at your favourite adult web sites unless you pass to them some of your most sensitive details and information and we know just how much we can trust the government to keep a secret. Please take the time to sign this petition and get all your friends to sign it as well.
So far it has a pitiful amount of signatures, is this really a measure of how concerned the kink community and the vanilla community is about the total loss of freedom. Your freedom of choice must be worth the small effort it takes to sign and to pass on this information via Facebook and twitter.
The Digital Economy Bill has passed its third reading in the Commons. It includes measures to force Internet Service Providers to block pornographic websites which don’t verify the age of users via intrusive means, and to censor legal content depicting sexual acts classified “non-conventional”.
This amounts to intrusive and dangerous State censorship of legal content online.
While the Government may claim that the aim is solely to protect children from viewing adult content, the reality is that these measures are unnecessary – when ISPs already provide optional filters for such content, bring severe privacy risks, and establish the precedent and framework to allow the Government to censor legal online content of which it simply does not approve.
These measures must be rejected so please follow this link and sign now.
Yesterday I was privileged to get a look at a shoot for a new series to run on Spanking Sarah web site. “This” said Sarah, “is a rehash of a series we used to do based on St. Justs Academy for girls, we have now brought it up to date and it will be an academy for girls and boys.
As we are no longer able to punish the pupils, something to do with political correctness we have decided to punish the parents of the children who then can instil into their young monsters the ethos of good behaviour and the value of hard work, application and the need to study”.
Well the shoot was very interesting and the star for the day was the amazing Amelia Jane Rutherford, this is one stunning lady and it was a privilege to get to meet her on the set and I am able to reproduce just a few still here today and I am hoping that the series will be a success for Sarah.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As the direct result of unconstitutional government censorship, Backpage.com has removed its Adult content section from the highly popular classified website, effective immediately. For years, the legal system protecting freedom of speech prevailed, but new government tactics, including pressuring credit card companies to cease doing business with Backpage, have left the company with no other choice but to remove the content in the United States.
As federal appeals court Judge Richard Posner has described, the goal is either to “suffocate” Backpage out of existence or use the awesome powers of the government to force Backpage to follow in the footsteps of Craigslist and abandon its Adult advertising section. Judge Posner described such tactics as “a formula for permitting unauthorized, unregulated, foolproof, lawless government coercion.”
“It’s a sad day for America’s children victimized by prostitution,” said Dr. Lois Lee, Founder and President, Children of the Night, a leading national hotline and shelter program for victims of sex trafficking based in Los Angeles. “Backpage.com was a critical investigative tool depended on by America’s vice detectives and agents in the field to locate and recover missing children and to arrest and successfully prosecute the pimps who prostitute children.” She added, “The ability to search for and track potentially exploited children on a website and have the website bend over backwards to help and cooperate with police the way Backpage did was totally unique. It not only made law enforcement’s job easier, it made them much more effective at rescuing kids and convicting pimps.”
Backpage.com was created thirteen years ago by Jim Larkin and Michael Lacey, through their newspaper company, New Times Media, to compete with Craigslist, the nation’s largest online classified ad platform. Larkin and Lacey were pioneers in independent journalism, establishing Village Voice Media in 1970 to provide alternative news coverage of the Vietnam war and later served as editor and publisher of twenty weekly newspapers.
As The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have observed, the Senate subcommittee has engaged in an “invasive, burdensome inquiry into Backpage.com’s editorial practices [that] creates an intense chilling effect, not only for Backpage but for any website operator seeking to define their own editorial viewpoint and moderation procedures for the third-party content they host.”
This will not end the fight for online freedom of speech. Backpage.com will continue to pursue its efforts in court to vindicate its First Amendment rights and those of other online platforms for third party expression.
To learn more, visit http://www.backpage.com/classifieds/censored
CENSORED
If you want us to mention your site just get in touch, we will be pleased to do so.
Starting this week with English Spankers. Here’s what they say. “Louise does not make a very good maid but I suppose that is why I like her. It means that she is always doing something wrong and so I get the excuse to punish her. I have given her a taste of my lovely leather paddle but now more serious measures are called for. She is to be caned, her very first caning I think. Will I hold back and take it easy on her bottom? No she will get caned and caned hard.” I like the film, the caning is not over hard but it is very effective and Louise was crying like a baby before the end of the caning. She is a great looking girl, nice figure, well spoken and I understand she is a life and fashion model. Works for me.
Next a look at Spanking Sarah, although she does appear on other Strand Media sites I just love the way she hands out the punishments. She must be one of the best disciplinarians around and always seems to keep the dialogue on the films flowing a long. This film features Leo & Heather, I am not too sure of their relationship. Both young and good looking and I am getting to think that Leo has a bit of a sub side to him. Anyway, here is what Sarah has to say. “ Leo & Heather have a strange relationship but when it comes to porn they both seem to like it a lot. I am going to try to cure Heathers addiction to the hard stuff with a hard caning. She is a beautiful young girl and I dont want her going astray so she gets a telling off and then she has to bend over for some good hard strokes from my cane whilst Leo looks on”.
Don’t forget, and I know we do keep plugging this but wherever possible put a link or RSS feed to Spanking News, there are bad things happening in the UK with a repressive right wing government who are trying to make access to all spanking sites illegal or impossible and not only that they are trying to take away your privacy and make your private details available to outside parties. All the sites we feature here are based outside the UK and will NEVER divulge any information about you or your internet usage. We will shortly be publishing an article which explains just how your information is used and disseminated by people like Facebook, Twitter Instagram and others.
Thanks to the OPEN RIGHTS GROUP for this information. Please subscribe. help protect your privacy
2016 has been a year to remember or possibly one to forget! Political upheaval and celebrity deaths aside, what did 2016 mean for digital rights?
It was the year when….
Theresa May got her snoopers’ charter
While politicians, the media and public were distracted by Brexit, the UK parliament passed the most extreme surveillance law in a democracy – the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA). ORG fought hard to limit its severe measures but only the Lib Dems, Greens and SNP suggested serious amendments, which the Tories and Labour rejected. (So you know just what you will get if you elect a gutless Labour government? A copy of a right wing reactionary Conservative government) Our Comment!
But the Courts say it needs to be rewritten
In 2014, ORG intervened in a case about data retention brought by the MPs Tom Watson and David Davis. ORG argued that blanket data retention contravened the protections set out in a previous Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) judgment. These arguments – including the unlawfulness of blanket retention – won the day and were accepted by the court. Last week, the CJEU stated, among other things, that blanket data retention is not permissible. This means that the Government is going to have to change the IPA or face another legal challenge. The fight-back begins!
The Government decided it wanted to block porn
The Digital Economy Bill, which is currently going through parliament, will compel porn sites to verify that their users are over 18. The proposals, which don’t include privacy protections, are largely unworkable because foreign porn sites could refuse to comply. Undeterred, the Government has now proposed to force ISPs to block sites that don’t apply age verification – potentially blocking thousands of legal websites in the UK. And just last week, they confirmed that Twitter accounts that link to blocked websites could also be blocked.
ORG is working to get the Government to amend the Digital Economy Bill so that privacy rights are protected. Over 18,000 people have already signed our petition against web blocking and this is going to be one of our big fights in 2017. Please sign the petition, every signature counts.
Open Rights Group
Once again it’s time to say goodbye and then hello and then make of it what we will. What sort of year has it been, in general? Even the most optimistic amongst us would have to say it’s been a pretty shitty year. Here in Europe we have the crisis of the UK wanting, no, daring to want to take back its Sovereignty and make its own laws, this means according to most that the collapse of the Queens realm is imminent. France and Italy look to be electing extreme right wing bigots into government, America has just elected a Donald Trump to the Presidency, may your god help you, and from Russia we have a war monger ruling the rest of the world and dictating the terms. So the world will carry on as usual and we the little people will become ever less relevant to it all.
Poverty is rife through out the western world, we the most advanced countries can’t feed or home our poor, we can’t look after our sick and we are not educating our kids to do the jobs that need doing, and we don’t have the will to change this, we are too apathetic and it’s not really our business anyway. Why have we become so complacent, what has happened to the peoples of the western world, will we really standby and watch while the other side of the world is ravaged by war, dictated to by greed and the unquenchable desire for power of a few. The sad answer is yes we will, we will because we are OK, we have a job, we have some money in our pockets, we have our kids…
OH yes our kids, our kids are pretty lucky, for the average teenager the ability to put a smart phone in front of their faces and spend their days talking nonsense to others like them is all they want and all they need, they do not know how to engage in any social discourse, how to relate face to face with others so they will be well equipped when it’s their turn to start doing the politicking and the diplomacy . Syria, starvation, deprivation, not for them. Do they even know what is happening? Some do and some are doing things about it but they will come up against the same walls and we do not encourage too much dissent, too much free thinking, so don’t break these walls down.
There are other kids though, these are the ones who are being bourn into a world we created, where they grow up knowing nothing but war and hate and poverty both of mind and spirit. These kids are going to grow up but what then? What will their out look on life be, will they be thankful to us for our inability to end what is happening in their homeland, will they thank us for passing by on the other side. We have Palestine where a whole people are being systematically squeezed into the sea and America agrees with this illegal activity, we have the UK where MPs on Britain’s are divided over plans that would recommend suspending UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia over alleged breaches of international law in Yemen. Why are the UK government supplying these head chopping butchers with arms? Money of course, what else would it be, they dress it up and say no, it’s because of the intelligence we get from them, so we condone torture as well.
That’s just a small look at where we are going to be in the New Year and I for one do not see it getting any better, the cause and the effect are the same. I start the year with profound sadness because I know it wont change. America had half a chance with Obama but the right wing fanatics neutered any good this man could have done and beat him down, the UK has a man called Jeremy Corbyn who has vision and has a deep commitment to socialist principles but he has been beaten down by his own people and the rest of Europe is holding its breath waiting for the collapse of their currency.
I can only wish us all a Happy New Year and hope that I am entirely wrong and that nothing written above is true.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT
Although the UK government has lost it’s case in the EU court please don’t think it will simply give up and go away, that’s not what they do when they seek to control and there are always ways around most court rulings. Our government employs experts to look at ways they can get to you, at you and inside your head, the easiest way these days is just to follow you on line. We all know the dangers of things like Face Book, what you say or display in picture there will be around in one form or another and will, as the younger members of our society find out in years to come, come back to haunt them. If you must display your life on line for all and sundry to see then you are asking for all the problems you will get. Better to be wise, we did before the internet get around with out recording our every activity and sharing it with total strangers, why do we feel the need to do it now? I am just posing the questions, I’m not interested in the answers as those who live by social media will surly die by it.
Just writing blogs like this leaves one open to trolls and other agencies to keep an eye on what you do and what you think so unless you are able to live with this and not really care about the fact of being hacked or followed then continue with your open life style.
For those who take their privacy seriously then we reprint, in part a very good article from The Verge. Read it and digest it as it may come in useful to you one day. Take particular note of the section referring to FREE services. They are NEVER FREE, they all take something from you, usually information, this goes for Google, Amazon, Ebay, PayPal and all the rest. Every time you search for something or buy something online it adds to an over all picture of you. So, don’t be paranoid, be careful but also be sure, someone is watching.
AVOID ONLINE SURVEILLANCE
The UK is about to pass into law sweeping surveillance legislation that will force ISPs and mobile operators to keep a complete record of every citizen’s browsing history for up to a year. This information will be accessible without a warrant to intelligence services, the police, and a number of other government agencies — including, bizarrely, the likes of the Gambling Commission and the Food Standards Agency.
While much of the legislation is concerned with how the government can track down serious criminals like terrorists and child abusers, it’s the wholesale collection of every citizen’s web activity that has a lot of people worried. After all, there’s very little oversight about how the information is accessed, and it’s private companies that have to store the data, there is a good chance it will get stolen by hackers at some point. (If this sounds too pessimistic, remember that in the last year alone, there have been two major attacks in the UK stealing customer data from the ISP TalkTalk and the mobile operator Three.)
So, if you’re a UK citizen who doesn’t want their browser history to end up in a government vault, how do you protect yourself?
USE A VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORK
This is really the simplest advice for anyone looking to use the internet with a little more privacy. A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a service that passes your internet traffic through different servers around the world. Not all VPNs are created equal, though, and companies differ on whether or not they encrypt that traffic, or whether they keep logs of users’ activity. (This doesn’t mean recording browser history, per se, but can include basic information like “computer with IP address X used our VPN network for Y hours on Z day.”)
You’ll have to pay for a VPN to get a good one
Ed Johnson-Williams, a member of the UK’s Open Rights Group, and someone who briefs journalists and NGOs on how to avoid surveillance for a living, says that if you want quality, you should expect to pay for your VPN. In the UK this could cost between £25 and £40 a year. “That is an investment that you just have to make if you want to take privacy seriously,” says Johnson-Williams. There are free VPNs available, but he advises against them. “A free VPN company will itself probably be analyzing what sites you’re looking at, or inserting its own advertising into your webpages to make money,” he says.
The website TorrentFreak publishes a yearly survey of VPNs, and asks them questions about what information they store on their customers, where they store it, and how they deal with government requests for data. As the survey shows, most paid-for VPNs don’t keep logs and don’t hand over data, but at the bottom of the page you can find a list of companies you’ll probably want to stay away from. Some popular paid services include NordVPN, AirVPN, and Private Internet Access.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Although the police are not going to be picking up your phone conversations, or the content of your chats in Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp (not without hacking your phone anyway, and they’ll need a warrant for that), you might want to start using a more secure messaging app all the same. Experts agree that the best pick is Signal, which not only offers secure one-to-one conversations, but also group chat, and voice calling. You can download for iOS here or for Android here.
The advice in this article certainly won’t protect anyone against determined government surveillance. If the security services of the UK — or any other nation for that matter — want to hack your phone or your computer, there’s really very little you can do to stop them. But, if you simply object on principle to the idea of being watched online constantly, you might want to follow some of these steps all the same. It’s up to you.
Is spanking fun? Well that obviously depends on (1 Did you want it (2Did you deserve it (3 Do you like it (4 Did you have a choice (5 Is it your chosen way to spend a Saturday evening. Well they are just a few reasons why it may or may not be fun for you. As a giver of spankings I always find it fun, if it’s being given as a punishment, well that’s great, if it’s part of a sexy kinky evening, well that’s great and if I get called in to spank bottoms on peoples films well…Yes you get the idea. That’s great as well.
These days we need to have something to make us smile, to inject a little fun into the spanking world so I started looking around and discovered Spankart a rather clever concept executed by a nifty photoshop jockey and all round good egg called Kodders. This guy is getting quite a name for himself in the spanking business, he’s inventive, funny and knows that a good laugh is the best medicine when you’re feeling a little low, he also appears in a number of films on Sarah Spanks Men.
I thought that you might like to see some of his work, not all is terribly politically correct so if you get offended, too bad. Those of us who are in the spanking scene will recognize some of the situations and people and I just hope you can enjoy them in the spirit Kodders created them.
Oh, and have a very happy Christmas from us all at Spanking News. Please try to publicize our News Blog, take our RSS FEED as there is a more serious side to what we are trying to do. We do take comments on the blog so if you wish please leave them.
Many thanks to The Open Rights Group for this information and for their work helping to keep our data private. You can follow them here This is once again just highlighting just how the UK is governed and how the citizenry are being manipulated and controlled. Just remember, the UK has more experience in repression and suppression than almost any other country and they know how to go about it without telling the electorate.
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled that the mass retention of our online communications data should not be allowed. The Court ruled that:
- Blanket data retention is not permissible – it should be restricted.
- Only data belonging to people who are suspected of serious crimes can be accessed.
- The police and other organisations must get independent authorisation if they want to access this data.
- You should be notified if your data is accessed.
The UK’s surveillance laws go against all of these rulings.
ORG played a part in this when we intervened in a case about the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) brought by the MPs Tom Watson and David Davis. We argued that blanket data retention was incompatible with EU law and today the CJEU agreed.
Although DRIPA expires at the end of 2016, the ruling will affect the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA).
When MPs come back in January, we’re going to tell them they need to change the IPA. If not, we’ll see the Government back in court.
We could not have done this without our supporters. Please help us to undertake future legal actions by joining ORG or upgrading your membership today.
Pandora Blake is one of the most articulate and vocal campaigners against the DEBill {Digital Economy} and against internet censorship. Please take time to look at this short film made by those involved in the spanking industry. Help defend all our liberties and our fight for sexual freedom. Please take our RSS feed for this site and publicize this site http://www.spanking-news.com wherever you can, we will endeavor to keep you informed about the changes and the creeping censorship that will affect us all.
Do not think that just because you don’t live in the UK this does not affect you, it most certainly does. All websites depend on being seen by as many people as possible, one of the largest markets for spanking porn is the UK.
If your American or French or German based websites can’t be seen in the UK they will lose a large market share, this will severely curtail their ability to continue in business. None of these sites make a great deal of money, producing films is expensive and time consuming. So, add this to the fact that if the British government are able to get away with this scheme, which will make our internet the most heavily censored outside North Korea, your country could be next. Support Pandora
In the wake of the AVMS regulations 2014, porn performers, kinksters, erotic writers and spanking enthusiasts from the UK and US talk to Pandora Blake about the implications of the new laws, how it affects them, and why porn censorship is something we should all care about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-vloGpEJE
By Jim Killock
The government intends to require pornographic websites to verify the age of their customers, in order to exclude under 18s from accessing inappropriate material. Setting aside for a moment whether this is the right approach or even achievable, the consequences are potentially disastrous.
Around half of UK adults access pornography, including a large proportion of women. This bill therefore places perhaps 25 million UK adults at risk of data leaks and fraud.
Age verification (AV) is not an easy task. In this case, it needs to be accurate, private, secure, trustworthy, easy and very cheap. Up until now, sites have employed either an ‘honesty box’ approach (‘proceed only if you are over 18’) or taken a card payment to imply age. Neither are robust. In the case of pornography, card details are not an appropriate means to verify age. Encouraging people to use them in this way creates a potential gold mine for fraudsters.
So behind the scenes, the government encouraged industry to find their own ‘solutions’ to the problem. In parallel, the industry wrote UK guidelines for age verification systems, known as PAS 1296 at the BSI. How official sounding. It must be good.
Unfortunately, industry efforts so far appear woeful. At an event a few weeks ago, the various providers touted their solutions. One involved scraping Facebook profiles to guess your age; which is as horrific as it sounds (and as Admiral Insurance found out, against Facebook’s T&Cs).
Others leveraged credit cards. This would not only open up the possibility of fraudulent imitations, it would also cause chaos for the payment industry, who look for small, token payments as a sign that criminals are ‘testing’ the validity of stolen card details.
Another tried to use people’s mobile phone numbers to work out if they were over 18. This would be discriminatory against people who use unregistered pay-as-you-go phones, for instance. A further likely approach would be for IT companies to attempt to register users, perhaps alongside credit card details. This could help them track users across the pornographic internet. Others were complicated, or deployed security measures that worried our security experts.
Given that the solutions for the age verification system seem to be at best embryonic, you’d hope that the digital economy bill would regulate the privacy aspects tightly, in order that issues such as porn tracking, massive databases, fraud and cybersecurity would be minimised. There is none of it. Not once is privacy mentioned. AV systems aren’t mentioned, either.
Instead, the bill hopes to empower the regulator to specify what qualified as a website that verifies age. It is a recipe for chaos and confusion.
It isn’t as if the UK government doesn’t know how to do age verification either. It has experience in creating Verify, which does exactly this while keeping user data separate from government services. Why isn’t the government advocating using Verify, you might ask? Cost is the most likely reason.
Aside from all the risks the government is taking with UK adults’ privacy and security, the obvious question is whether AV technologies can be forced on foreign websites. Here, the bill’s strategy was to create a legal duty for card and advertising companies to cut off UK payments to non-compliant sites.
Many sites wouldn’t care of course, as they are too small, or the UK market is not significant to them. This will be a commercial decision for them, and at the long tail of pornographic websites, implementing UK age verification will simply never happen.
That leaves the embarrassing likelihood that even if major pornographers adopt AV technology, teenagers will merely have to click through another page or so of results to get to material that is not blocked. This does not seem like the result that was intended.
Thus Conservative MPs – led by Claire Perry and backed by Labour – have forced the government to propose website blocking as part of the armoury for the regulator. Here, the regulator will be able to block sites that don’t implement AV.
This of course creates a paradox that perfectly legal material is being restricted for adults as well as under 18s. While that may not worry MPs, it is bound to impact sexual minorities. Advocates claim that this is not censorship. We can argue about whether the state’s aim is to restrict the availability of pornography to adults, but it certainly will be the effect.
As the Guardian pointed out on Wednesday, once a regulator has the ability to decide what compliance looks like, the BBFC will inevitably want to specify whether websites are conforming with their view of UK law. Non-compliant websites won’t qualify and will be open to sanctions including blocking.
As we know, the BBFC and UK legal views of what is acceptable pornography is rather narrower than that of most US publishers. It remains to be seen if it is practical for them to curate their massive back catalogues in such a way as they restrict material for a UK audience.
For UK readers, the question you should ask is whether you want the government investing in this infrastructure of control, and where they might apply this approach next. In our experience, once MPs have a taste for censorship, they develop an unpleasant and anti-social addiction.
Jim Killock, is executive director of the Open Rights Group.
It would be so nice to be able to end the year with some positive thoughts, some bright star on the horizon, some hope for the coming year but, this post is a little like the one I made at this time last year. This blog has not been too active during the year, other things seem to get in the way and when there are so many problems one does not like to keep highlighting them. I do pledge however that for as long as we are able we will keep posting and helping in the fight against our reactionary and seriously nasty politicians.
As far as our industry and our fetish and for many of us our way of life is going, my last post should be read and taken seriously. The proposed legislation is taking us back to the day of Lady Chatterley, yes I am old enough to remember the outrage that was caused by this crass decision and now we are sleep walking into control of the masses by the minority. We are letting this happen, we are doing nothing about this.
Maybe we have not realised it but the proposals outlined in the Digital Economy Bill will effect every producer of content of an adult nature no matter where in the world they may be. The UK is proposing to block EVERY website containing adult material. So, look at this, I know that lots of girls and indeed couples earn a living from the website adultwork many of our favourite ladies in the spanking world advertise on sites such as Spanking Personals and ITC well these sites will be banned, they will not be visible to anyone in the UK. Sites which give instant downloads of movies like Clips4Sale and The Spanking Library Will not be visible in the UK, they will have to go behind an age verification wall and you should read the article below to understand what this entails.
Take some time to reflect on this.
Are you aware that your freedom to view what so ever you chose on the internet is being curtailed by the British Government?
Are you aware what your Members of Parliament are doing in your name and this is not limited to the right wing Tory government but is backed also by the Labour party?
The Investigatory Powers Bill is on track to becoming UK law after being approved by the House of Lords, despite facing strong opposition. What does this mean for you:
To prove you’re over 18, you’ll have to type in sensitive personal details such as your legal name, credit card details, date of birth, address or phone number. That data will be visible not to us, but to whatever age verification system we use. Private companies will be involved they are free to operate unregulated, and without having to safeguard the security and privacy of your personal data. It will force internet service providers (ISPs) to store people’s web history data (known as Internet Connection Records, a list of websites you visit, but not the individual webpages you click on) for up to a year. Spy agencies will also be granted the power to collect bulk personal datasets, including information of people not suspected of any criminal activity. They will also be permitted to undertake large scale hacking operations, though they must first obtain a warrant from the secretary of state.
Web users in the UK will be banned from accessing websites portraying a range of non-conventional sexual acts, under a little discussed clause to a government bill currently going through parliament.
The proposal, part of the digital economy bill, would force internet service providers to block sites hosting content that would not be certified for commercial DVD sale by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC).
“Many of the sexual activities prohibited from R18 [the BBFC’s most explicit certification] are normalised and accepted aspects of healthy sexuality, and are proudly celebrated by the feminist, queer and ethical porn movements internationally,”
It is contained within provisions of the bill designed to enforce strict age verification checks to stop children accessing adult websites. After pressure from MPs, the culture secretary, Karen Bradley, announced on Saturday that the government would amend the bill to include powers to block non-compliant websites. In order to comply with the censorship rules, many mainstream adult websites would have to render whole sections inaccessible to UK audiences. That is despite the acts shown being legal for consenting over-16s to perform and for adults in almost all other liberal countries to film, distribute and watch.
Free speech campaigners labelled the move a “prurient” invasion into people’s sexual lives. “It should not be the business of government to regulate what kinds of consensual adult sex can be viewed by adults,” said Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of Index on Censorship.
Pictures and videos that show spanking, whipping or caning that leaves marks, and sex acts involving urination, female ejaculation or menstruation as well as sex in public are likely to be caught by the ban – in effect turning back the clock on Britain’s censorship regime to the pre-internet era.
“There has been no discussion of the censorship provisions of the digital economy bill by MPs during its committee stage, where debate has largely focused on age verification rules. But sources within the adult industry seemed aware.”
The scale of the restrictions only became apparent after the BBFC, which has since 1984 been empowered to classify videos for commercial hire or sale, agreed to become the online age verification regulator last month. A spokeswoman for the BBFC said it would also check whether sites host “pornographic content that we would refuse to classify”.
“In making this assessment, we will apply the standards that we apply to pornography that is distributed offline,” she said. “If a website fails on either of these [age verification or obscene content] tests then a notification of non-compliance will be sent to the site.”
There is no definitive list of sexual acts proscribed by the BBFC, but many adult film producers who have worked with the regulator have been forced to cut scenes, said Jerry Barnett, a free speech campaigner and author of Porn Panic!, which details the rise of a new pro-censorship movement in the UK.
“Although it is nominally designed to enforce the [Obscene Publications Act] guidelines of the Crown Prosecution Service, in practice it draws far tighter lines, many of them inexplicable. The ban on female ejaculation is a particularly strange example,” he said.
The censorship regime has led to bizarre understandings between the producers and regulators, Barnett said. One is the “four-finger rule”, which limits the number of digits that can be inserted into an orifice for sexual stimulation.
This whole act is going to make the UK the most heavily censored country outside North Korea and put us on an equal footing to tin pot dictatorships which find arbitrary reasons to stop its citizens viewing the internet of their choice. Please sign and share the petition against the censorship of legal adult content. You can find out more information from the open rights group https://www.openrightsgroup.org/support-org We take this infringement on our human rights very seriously, so should you. The passing of this legislation opens the door to wholesale blocking of websites the government do not approve of, not only this, they are infringing upon your freedom to please yourself what you see or hear.
To summaries: Parliament has voted to create a new national censor, that can block websites without a court order. The government wants it to censor adult websites that don’t offer “age verification”—and censor “non-conventional” content on those sites that do
Send your response
The Digital Economy Bill now has powers to force Internet Service Providers to block erotica and pornography websites that don’t verify the age of their users. It can also tell those sites what kind of material is acceptable—it says it will censor “non-conventional pornography”.
This equates to censorship of legal content – potentially affecting tens of thousands of websites and millions of people.
The policy is meant to enforce the use of “age verification” technology. Most websites won’t add these checks, or will choose to use simple but bad methods.
Age verification could itself lead to widespread credit card fraud, if publishers ask people to share their card details just to access random websites. Collection of porn browsing information would create risks of Ashley Maddison style data leaks. There no privacy safeguards in the Bill.
Once censorship is in place, politicians will think of plenty more things they can ban. We have heard discussions around this bill asking why more material is not being censored to make the Internet safe for families.
Blocking websites is a disproportionate, technical response to a complex, social issue. The UK’s children need education, not censorship, to keep them safe.
“Campaigners label bill targeted at online pornography a ‘prurient’ intervention that will take Britain’s censorship regime back to pre-internet era”.
Thanks to:
The Guardian
Pandora Blake
Open Rights Group
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