Thoughtcrime

I am extremely upset.
Richard’s art is going to be severely compromised, and for once, it’s not my fault.

Our UK government is planning to introduce a new law this summer, tagged on in a small addition to the revised Criminal Justice Act. The police will have unprecedented powers to enter your home and seize your computers for an indefinite period of time, as well as arresting you. If they find prohibited images on your computer, you could end up with a maximum punishment of three years in jail.

You can read more about the proposed new UK law here.

However, I can briefly summarise the issue as follows:

The Criminal Justice Act is currently in its consultation phase this month. It will ban possession of “extreme pornography”, which is defined as any image of what appears to be “serious violence”, which is further defined to be “acts that appear to be life-threatening, or are likely to result in serious, disabling injury”.
O.K. No moral problem there. Images of extreme violent porn, necrophilia, animals and so forth are repugnant and wrong, and those responsible should be prosecuted, and no-one who is remotely moral and decent would argue otherwise.

However, as is typical with this Government, it is trying to pass a law which will have a much wider impact than what appears to be the case at first examination.
Under these proposals, any image depicting “serious violence, created for sexual gratification” will be illegal, no matter if it is genuinely abusive, roleplay, posed by models, or carried out by consenting adults. Basically if it looks real, it’s going to be against the law. Any sort of DEPICTION, including theatrical, simulated, modelled or photo-shopped, even images which are drawn or painted.

The definition of “serious violence” is extremely loosely defined. It will be up to the local police and jury, to decide what is defined as “sexual violence”. The images merely have to be “realistic", where this means "conveying a realistic impression of fear, violence and harm".
This is completely subjective.
Potentially, mild bondage such as rope-work could be interpreted as serious violence if the police or jury decide it is defined as such - for example they might decide bondage is classified as sexual violence because it involves subjugation, or because it potentially might cause nerve damage. Similarly, a mild BDSM image, which is posed and is merely a fantasy scene, might well convey an impression of fear and harm to the ordinary average juror. Judging by the attitude of the people around here, a goodly proportion of our harmless art photography could be interpreted in this way.

What does seem certain under the proposals, is that Goth photography, BDSM images and images depicting “Kink” will be no more. Even art books containing such images will be banned, so I guess most of our fetish-photography book collection will have to go.

In addition, there is a very real suggestion that UK ISPs will be made to block access to any websites that feature material defined in the legislation. This could affect Model Mayhem, other modelling sites, many of the nude photography blogs we link to on the right here, plus any BDSM or Goth sites with icons, avatars or profile pictures, including forums. Even if ISP’s do not ban access to them, it will certainly be a crime to visit these sites, or to have visited them in the past, as the web sites you have visited are stored in your computer cache. The crime will be “possession” so even if the images were legal at the time, the police could still trace you through your ISP and seize your computers. Even if you delete the images, they will still be recoverable from your disk with specialist software, and you could potentially still be prosecuted.

The Government is refusing to distinguish between abuse, role-play and consensual acts, thus criminalising a whole section of people, such as Goths, S&M, or those into fetish, who are simply expressing their art, or who simply have a slightly different way of exploring their sexuality.

Critics of the new law say that it will be extremely difficult to actually find and police these images. However, photographers, especially nude art photographers such as Richard, will be easy targets. We have a very real possibility of our computer servers being seized for several months in the future. It doesn't matter whether or not the police find something illegal. Mere suspicion is enough to seize the servers indefinitely. Since our day-job software is located and stored on our servers, as well as Fluffytek, this presents a potentially horrendous situation. Our servers CANNOT go down at any time. If these same servers are seized, our company fails instantly because we can no longer trade. The end of our livelihood. It’s as simple as that. There is only one way to absolutely guarantee that this never happens, and that is for Richard to take down the Fluffytek web site completely, and stop shooting any nudes.

Neither he nor I want to do this. Nude photography has become a shared passion and a way of life for us. It has enriched our lives in ways that we could never have previously imagined.

So what do we do?

Currently we intend to “suck it and see”, and hope that this stupid bill gets thrown out before it ever becomes law. In the meantime, I must persuade my extremely reluctant photographer to delete the bondage shots on our web site and servers, and in future to severely restrict the styles which we were planning to shoot. I had a dream of being a fairly “way-out” fetish model, but this will no longer be possible under the new law. Richard will also have to reassess just what type of nude photography he will be able to shoot in the future. Fine art-nudes appear to be a fairly safe bet at the moment, but as for what happens next, who knows?

Please note this is NOT an over-reaction on my part. I am not being overly dramatic.

Nude-photography-wise, in the U.K., this is the end of free artistic expression as we know it.

Thoughtcrime.




Sorry about the depressing post, folks. Here's the beautiful Kate to cheer you up.