Recently I’ve been doing some research into internet pornography and obscenity laws. Or at least trying to. It’s almost impossible though. Our law is so fragmented an inaccessable the chances of you actually understanding or even knowing what the law is in one particular area is slim to none.
So far I have found the best resource available to be the vague information on Wikipedia. To say the internet is so rich with information it seems to be somewhat of a wasteland of legal info. The websites that claim to offer legal information actually offer very little of it and the official sites that claim to actually have the law for some reason never return useful results when you’re looking for it.
I’ve spent the afternoon hunting around the inner bowls of the Brotherton Library trying to find information but it’s not easy. The acts of parliament are only available in bill form. And only from about 1960 onwards. Which is great when your looking for the Obscene Publications Act 1957.
Though from what I have gathered so far on the law including the internet, books and parliamentary papers, all pornography is illegal under English law. I mean, the fact that there isn’t actually any pornography law at all and it’s just law about obscenity applied to pornography using terms like material that would “deprave and corrupt” is bad enough but the bits of law that do exist seem to either just be ignored by the entire country or ammended by some mystical event that then wiped everyone’s memory and all records of said event.
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This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 3:52 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 17th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
I love the law! It is sooo awesome, one wonders with statements such as ‘material that would “deprave and corrupt” ‘ that anyone gets prosecuted now days, or that everyone doesn’t, depending on what angle you are coming from… Surely it must be more specific, but then I guess the law has always been a little vague. There was a time in the 18th Century that a woman who was “suspected of being a prostitute” could be taken in and examined by the authorities for sexual diseases. Seriously, who has to suspect her? What authority would they have to have it on? “My mate John said you sold him your body last week, so I am afraid I am going to have to take you in and examine you for STIs” Crazy…
Sorry, went a little off topic, thats what happens when you are still at work after starting at 9am this morning…
July 18th, 2006 at 1:11 am
The law is a crazy animal, but there is always one piece of advice that helps. Whatever the legal issue, always make sure you know a good lawyer.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Well that’s the real issue, the reason that not everyone gets or doesn’t get prosecuted is because we don’t really have a proper legal system we just have a vague legal framework in which the people in power are can pick and choose what they consider acceptable in society at will.