possession of some porn illegal in UK
The images of violent porn, defined as "material featuring violence that is, or appears to be, life-threatening or is likely to result in serious and disabling injury" isn't my thing, but the law is focused on one case in which the killer-- who killed his victim by strangling her with a pair of tights and kept her body in the freezer-- looked at internet sites that were connected with the "fetish".
1.) The guy is insane. Whether he surfed websites or not doesn't cause him to kill.
2.) This makes the connection that his obsession with his fetish caused (or was at least instrumental in aggrivating) his killing actions. I say that correlation is not causation, but this isn't even correlation: consider that the website has likely thousands of viewers; how many of them are killers. This freak of nature is an anomaly in any consideration, and making "violent porn" illegal to own because of this is dangerous to freedom issues.
3.) The definition is ill-defined enough that it could start infringing on more mainstream fetish porn, particularly bondage, which is mainstream enough to affect millions of people.
It's a politicized morality ploy.
The images of violent porn, defined as "material featuring violence that is, or appears to be, life-threatening or is likely to result in serious and disabling injury" isn't my thing, but the law is focused on one case in which the killer-- who killed his victim by strangling her with a pair of tights and kept her body in the freezer-- looked at internet sites that were connected with the "fetish".
1.) The guy is insane. Whether he surfed websites or not doesn't cause him to kill.
2.) This makes the connection that his obsession with his fetish caused (or was at least instrumental in aggrivating) his killing actions. I say that correlation is not causation, but this isn't even correlation: consider that the website has likely thousands of viewers; how many of them are killers. This freak of nature is an anomaly in any consideration, and making "violent porn" illegal to own because of this is dangerous to freedom issues.
3.) The definition is ill-defined enough that it could start infringing on more mainstream fetish porn, particularly bondage, which is mainstream enough to affect millions of people.
It's a politicized morality ploy.
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magicmarmot- Tom Ramcigam
- Magic Marmot Studios
Comments
fantasy does steer people. thats my opinion based on some experiences that dont make it to the blog world
The correlation-not-causation argument is the same one that I use to counter the gateway drug argument.
If I surf websites for pictures of exotic cars, it may excite my desire to have one, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to kill someone to get one. If I did, it would be extremely ridiculous to make it illegal to posess pictures of exotic cars.
Violence in media does influence the way that people think, in fact, the media in general is influential to the way people think. If it weren't, advertising would be useless. BUT, it still isn't able to overcome some basic social taboos, nor does it want to. Exploiting the attention grabbing attractiveness of "shock value" isn't anything any media conglomorate would want to give up.
Violence is portrayed to BE shocking, though. "Grand Theft Auto" gets a wheelbarrow full of free publicity for being disturbingly, unpleasantly sexist and violent. Some people play GTA because it's socially taboo, some play because they are maladjusted to begin with and are pacified by their fantasies played out in video games.
Whether or not it causes people to carry out actions that are generally socially unacceptable is an ENTIRELY different discussion from whether or not violence in media influences moral standards.
The State cannot be expected to decide who's fantasies are potentially dangerous to other people, in fact, they cannot be TRUSTED to do so, but most importantly for political reasons.
Thought, speech and action NEED to be treated seperately under the law in order for citizens to be able to exercize dissent. Just do.
Making it a crime to fantasize about slapping George W. Bush upside his head is not the same as making the actual assault a crime. If a political cartoon showed a public figure holding a gun to the head of another public figure, would it qualify as "material featuring violence that is, or appears to be, life-threatening or is likely to result in serious and disabling injury"?
Where's Larry Flynt when we need him?