Extreme porn now illegal north of the border

If you thought you could hide your extreme porn stash in a secluded location north of the border – think again. For this week, the Scottish Parliament finally fell into line with its English counterpart south of the border, passing laws - included within the Criminal Justice Bill - making it a criminal offence to possess images that were extreme and pornographic in nature. Like the English law on this topic, passed in May 2008, the Scottish law will focus on images that are realistic, pornographic and of an extreme nature. In addition, however, the Scottish law adds an extra clause, bringing within this Bill images which are believed to depict "rape or other non-consensual penetrative sexual activity". Quite how useful this clause may turn out remains to be seen. The Register has analysed nearly 50 cases that have been brought in the rest of the UK since the Westminster law went live. Our analysis reveals that in the vast majority of cases, the extreme porn in question featured bestial imagery ("human-on-animal" action) and not "human-on-human" action of the sort that the law’s proponents claimed it was designed to act against. We believe that there are two reasons for the low incidence of such cases. First, in the days after the law went live, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) advised English police forces not to police this law pro-actively, so the majority of convictions have been in association with other offences: they have been "add-on" charges. Second, while it is relatively easy to identify bestial images, the threshold for identifying human-human extreme porn is far more difficult, and hard-pressed police and prosecution may have better things to do with their time. Few cases have been defended, but where they have the end result has been embarrassing for the authorities.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/02/scotland_extreme_smut/