Continuing
on its recent censorship-happy path, the U.K. government amended
regulations this week to prohibit online porn from depicting a variety of erotic
activities. Now-illicit acts range from the very specific
(female ejaculation; “spanking, caning, and whipping beyond a
gentle level”) to the incredibly broad (“verbal abuse”). But
basically, the U.K. has banned BDSM and certain forms of fetish
porn—or at least, charging money for that sort of porn.
The new rules come as part of the 2014 Audiovisual Media
Services Regulations, which amends the country’s previous
communications law to require all “Video on Demand” services to
meet standards set by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC).
From Vice UK:
… from now on, VoD porn – online porn you still pay for,
essentially – must fall in line with what’s available on DVD.
That means that British pornography producers will no longer be
able to offer content online that couldn’t be bought in a sex
shop.Acts that are no longer acceptable include: spanking, caning and
whipping beyond a gentle level; penetration by any object
“associated with violence”; activities that can be classed as
“life-endangering”, such as strangulation and facesitting; fisting,
if all knuckles are inserted; physical or verbal abuse, even if
consensual; the portrayal of non-consensual sex; urination in
various sexual contexts; and female ejaculation.
It’s a strange, highly-subjective list of sexual behavior deemed
too deviant for folks to be exposed to. (Who knew women orgasming
were so scandalous?) “R18 is a strange thing,” Jerry Barnett,
founder of anti-censorship campaign Sex and Censorship, told
Vice. “There appear to be no rational explanations for
most of the R18 rules–they’re simply a set of moral judgements
designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British
people from watching pornography.”
Adult filmmakers in the U.K. who show their videos on for-pay
porn sites are now limited in what they can feature, and websites
that charge for porn content are limited in what they can show. But
of course there’s plenty of (both free and for-sale) BDSM and
fetish porn out there on the World Wide Web. U.K. lawmakers are
essentially just further driving homegrown porn purveyors out of
business. The industry is already strained by age-verification filters,
mandated last year, which have driven up website operating costs
while turning away customers.
Both regulations disproportionately affect smaller, independent
porn producers and websites. As Vice’s Frankie Mullin
points out, the new censorship rules will have less effect on large
porn producers and mainstream sites, “which tend to favour the
strip, blowjob, fuck, cum-all-over-a-woman’s-face formula, but the
UK’s smaller, independent producers,” specifically fetish
producers. These include people like Ms Tytania, who makes
feminist-tinged dominatrix porn, and pretty much anybody else whose
products deviate from normative sexual practices. The rules really
are a crazy infringement on freedom of artistic expression, not
solely a commercial setback for someone who runs subscription
rough-sex sites (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
This comes in the wake of increasing action from the U.K. government
(as well elsewhere in the European Union) toward censoring the
Internet. The more I read about things like this latest round of
U.K. porn censorship or the Europe Union’s new “right to be
forgotten”, the more I do stop and appreciate the speech
protections we have in the U.S., even if those are ever
under-attack from over-zealous politicians and culture warriors. As
J.D. Tuccille wrote in response to a recent report on press freedom in the
Americas, “the bad news is that the United States has …
downward-spiraling respect for freedom of the press. The good news
is that our officials’ transgressions pale in comparison to the
crimes inflicted on free speech and free inquiry” elsewhere. I
don’t think British-style web (and porn) censorship will fly here,
but not for lack of a want of it from both lawmakers and activists.
We’re just lucky enough to have the First Amendment.
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