RE: Adult channels to be outlawed
The other issue which we've barely touched upon in this discussion is what actually constitutes 'porn'.
It is my understanding that in Iceland porn has been banned for sometime, but the term is not actually defined, so the law cannot be properly enforced and hence porn mags and movies have continued to be freely available. The recent moves there against porn are more an attempt to clarify what porn is so the law can be enforced.
So who decides what is and isn't 'porn'? Will art galleries be raided and closed down for displaying nude paintings and statues? Will bookshops and even libraries be closed for daring to stock 'pornographic' literature like 50 Shades, or even Mills and Boon? What about hospitals and doctors surgeries that display graphic medical posters of the human body, will they fall foul?
It may sound silly, but we have been here before, Lady Chatterleys Lover is a famous case in english history, and I can recall in my lifetime, bookshops being raided for selling the works of Jean Genet with it's often graphic homosexual content. I also recall the furore when The Dead Kennedys sold an album with a poster by H. R. Giger, a well known and popular modern artist. The poster involved a series of penises entering vaginas, and many stores refused to sell the album outright. A compromise was reached where the album was sold in a sealed plastic sleeve with a warning sticker, and only sold to 'adults', but I seem to recall that people were arrested because of the incident, though I don't recall if anything came of those cases.
(On a slightly different, but sort of related, tack, I can also recall the attempts to prosecute the Monty Python crew for 'blasphemy' when Life Of Brian was released, and there were other blasphemy cases throughout recent years as well. A similar crazy, archaic, nonsensical law, thankfully consigned to the dustbin these days)
Relating this to what eccles is saying about things like 'violent' porn, I seem to recall reading something in the articles about this case where it was talking about trying to ban not porn in general, but 'porn which is degrading or abusive' or a similar terminology.
That may sound more fair and reasonable, but again, who decides what constitutes 'degrading and abusive'? There are those who would argue that all pornography is ultimately 'degrading and abusive' to women in general, so even that clarification becomes meaningless.
These things become the tip of an iceberg, first The Pirate Bay is barred by ISP's, now they are doing the same with the likes of KickAssTorrents and others. Who's next google's search engine which still shows those sites in their results? These things may start off with good intentions, but they open a door which may become very difficult to close again, and before we know it, we are just as bad at censoring our internet and other content as places like China.
In '1984', George Orwell spoke of Newspeak, a deliberate and conscious bending of the truth to keep the population happy, a defeat in the war becomes a marvellous victory, shops are shown with shelves bulging with produce, when everyone knows the shelves are actually empty. As we move towards 2014, here we are trying to censor the internet, and trying to shackle our press, we are moving ever closer to Orwells Newspeak!
"I'm a featherless bird ... in a sky so absurd"
Sophia - Becky - Mica - Camilla - Ella
(This post was last modified: 17-03-2013 10:51 by munch1917.)
|