(15-11-2009 12:22 )mofozombie81 Wrote: Thanks for providing some links to the consultation. I'm half-way reading through it and it seems to be down to changes in advertising rules, and how best the Babestation channels can fit into these new codes. In fairness to Ofcom, they are taking all things into consideration and of cause welcome input (deadline is 15th Jan). From what I have read so far, they've got nothing against the actually content of the shows, just all the advertising that's also taking place. Once I've read and digested it all, I'll try and add more to the debate.
Indeed, passing the buck has become standard practice in all areas of censorship and legislative mission creep. Let's call it getting stitched up by bureaucratic jobsworths.
Ofcom and the ASA have pounced upon this opportunity to 'reclassify' babe chat on the back of an ECJ definition of phone-in quiz shows being supposed 'teleshopping'.
Teleshopping programmes advertise products and sell/supply those products by mail order from orders and payments received over the phone. I've actually worked on the order processing systems of these shows and they work just like ANY catalogue-based tele-sales/mail-order operation.
Phone-in quizzes are in fact a lottery that cost around £1 per entry - i.e. you pay whether your call is 'selected' or 'rejected' for entry into the draw (aka 'queue') and, even then, 'selection' is no gurantee that you will actually be drawn to give an answer (whether your answer is correct or not) on the show before the next round of caller roulette begins - its a con. Moreover, this is telegambling not teleshopping.
Babe chat is indeed a live and interactive service. You pay for as long as you use that service - not per abruptly terminated call as with a quiz show but, per minute as you chat or listen-in. The real question however, is WHY the ASA and Ofcom choose to place restrictions on supposed 'sexual' services? Don't we have a right to satisfy our sexual needs by any legal and harmless (even beneficial) means? And don't those providing such services have a right to advertise them? Who or what permits the preposterous 'religious' claims to some higher moral authority to dictate what we're allowed to see on TV or do in the privacy of our own homes? The restrictive 'rules' placed on supposed sexual services and advertising by the ASA and Ofcom are totally arbitrary and without any real justifications whatsoever - that's the issue! These 'rules' simply perpetuate the myth that British people have some 'problem' with sexual openness or 'pornographic' materials, that we 'enjoy' being sexually repressed by faceless bureaucrats, that this sexually repression defines us as 'British'.
People are only 'shocked' or 'offended' by that which is unfamiliar or unusual to them. So, suppressing 'shocking' or 'offensive' material simply perpertuates this type of material's ability to 'shock' and 'offend' - i.e. people become SENSITISED to it. It's a pointless, rights-abusing and self-sustaining excuse for censorship because, as anyone who treats phobias knows, the only way to get people over their irrational fears and hang-ups is to make them confront that which 'shocks', 'spooks' and 'offends' their senses and thus DESENSITISE them to it.
The ASA and Ofcom are doing the WRONG thing for all the WRONG reasons. Indeed, the courts have stated that "freedom of expression exists to SHOCK and DISTURB states and opinions...in order to progress society" - i.e. to help us climb out from under centuries of sexual repression that have been forced upon us by moralising religious extremists.