World News

  Small Minds on Small Island

From the Cyprus Mail

Police yesterday stood by the decision to ban all explicit pornographic material in Cyprus, reinforcing the edict announced last Friday that the ‘halcyon’ days of buying or renting pornography have come to an end for people of all ages.

Assistant to the Chief of Police, Soteris Charalambous sent out the message that the force would be resolute in its enforcement of the porn ban law, with the aim being to prevent the corruption of minors, and if adults have a problem with that, then it’s up to parliament to change the law.

The announcement, based on the legal opinion of Deputy Attorney-general Petros Clerides, cites existing legislation which states that it is illegal to import or attempt to import; print, distribute, circulate, sell, rent, give out or lend, or offer to sell or rent; show or screen; any action or omission intended to make possible any of the former actions, printed material, video tapes or other objects of any nature containing sexual acts, sexual contact or other indecent displays.

Given the previous understanding that the sale of pornographic material was tacitly accepted, police have given shopkeepers a 10-day grace period, after which they will begin implementation of the law. Police warned shops displaying, selling or renting pornographic material after December 27, they would be charged and the goods confiscated.

The move has shocked businesses and members of the public who argued that a law preventing access to pornography by minors was perfectly understandable, but that blocking consenting adults too stank of Puritanism.

Charalambous yesterday stood by the far-reaching decision, noting that the deputy AG had ruled that the law, in place since the 1970s, would have to be implemented. It is a complete ban of hardcore pornographic material. Everything, everywhere… customs, kiosks, supermarkets, DVDs, video cassettes, magazines, the lot. However, the ban only refers to explicit porn, and does not include what is termed as ‘soft porn’.

We investigated the matter in our offices and concluded that magazines like Playboy and Penthouse are soft porn and will be allowed. Nudity is allowed, scenes of explicit acts are not, said Charalambous.

So from next week, adults will be prohibited from accessing porn but may walk freely into any cabaret, where sex is reportedly a popular is choice of purchase.

Minors are not allowed into cabarets, first of all, said the police chief assistant. But soft porn and cabarets are ok because nudity is not forbidden. In a cabaret, women dance naked, and seeing a woman’s body is natural. They do not perform sexual acts. There are no explicit scenes like those showing in any kiosk with homosexuality or sexual anomalies that could lead to the corruption of a minor.
But this is not just about removing material from kiosks, and placing it out of reach of children, it is an all out ban. Adults will have no way to watch porn, if they so desire.

Asked if sex shops, where the entry of minors can be regulated, could continue to sell these illegal products, he replied: There are no sex shops in Cyprus and if there are they are illegal. They are prohibited under the law.

Asked if the all-out ban was a tad draconian, Charalambous asked: Have you ever been to the UK and seen porno DVDs and magazines in kiosks where children can go to buy them?

Similar laws exist in Europe, except they have made amendments to allow the opening of sex shops where adults can go and buy what they want without fear of underage people being affected. They are allowed to buy and rent etc as long as they don’t show explicit material in the shop window. If parliament wants to do this, that doesn’t bother us. It bothers us to see anomalous porn at kiosks where kids can get it easily, said Charalambous.

Speaking of anomalies, the police official said the issue of explicit porn shown on Cypriot TV subscription channel Lumiere (LTV) was also discussed with the deputy legal chief. We discussed LTV and decided that it was a private channel, with subscribers. If they let their children see porn then that is their problem.

Regarding the prospect of getting rid of thousands of magazines, cassettes and DVDs next week, Charalambous said: It will be a big job and a huge problem for the first 20 days but then it will stop. We will be confiscating illegal porn but also illegal copies, because you never find originals being sold.”

Certified sexologist Dr Georgios Georgiou previously warned that the move to ban pornography in Cyprus could be counter-productive. Pornography is a way of stimulating our sexual fantasy in our love maps. If it is banned, it might unleash different urges on so-called ‘perverts’ who like sadomasochism, for example, to find another outlet for their sexual fantasies.”

  High Stakes Bids for Trivial Offence 

From News.Com

Avnish Bajaj, chief executive officer of eBay Indian subsidiary Baazee.com was released on bail by local courts Tuesday, the company said.

Bajaj, an American citizen, was arrested Friday in the Indian capital under India's Information Technology Act, after a video clip of two Delhi youngsters engaging in a sex act was sold via Baazee.com. The boy who engaged in the act filmed it on his camera phone and later sent the clip to his friends. He has been arrested. The clip was put up for auction by a student of the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur. That student was also arrested.

Following the incident, schools have banned mobile phones on their premises.

We applaud the Indian justice system for making this decision quickly, eBay said in a statement. Bajaj will continue to cooperate with the police investigation into this matter. He will also present his response to the charges against him in court at a later date.

eBay acquired Baazee in a deal worth $50 million earlier this year. Baazee claims more than 1 million registered customers.

The company said a Baazee.com user had attempted to sell the pornographic video clip on the Web site in late November. The video clip was not shown on the site but the seller had offered to e-mail the clip to buyers directly, it said. The listing was taken off the portal once it was discovered because it violated Baazee's policies and user agreement, eBay said.

Local industry leaders have condemned the arrest and fear a negative impact on the growth of India's tech industry. As a global, mature, and responsible technology industry and the most attractive destination for services, we need to ensure that we do not send out the wrong signals to global customers and investors, officials from the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) said, calling the arrest an extreme and completely unnecessary step.

The incident has also drawn attention from the United States. On Monday, U.S. Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters that this situation is one of concern at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

Secretary (Colin Powell) has been following it closely. He was actually asking about it at this morning's staff meeting. It's a matter that we have been following, Boucher said, according to a transcript of the press conference posted on the department's Web site. He has been visited by a U.S. consular officer from the U.S. embassy in New Delhi.

Boucher would not confirm whether incoming Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had contacted Indian officials about the matter.

  Incitement to Envy

From Canada.com

The Ontario Film Review Board will no longer have the power to arbitrarily censor films under new legislation introduced Thursday in response to a court ruling earlier this year.

However, the board will still have a role in classifying films, videos, DVDs and video games according to age appropriateness.

The film review board will still have the authority to classify every film, said Consumer and Business Services Minister Jim Watson. They'll see every film, every film has to be submitted to it. But it won't be in a position, unless it's in a breach of the Criminal Code, to disallow a film from being shown in Ontario.

The changes to the legislation stem from a case involving a Toronto bookstore, Watson said. In April, the Ontario Superior Court ruled the board didn't have the constitutional right to ban films unless they're deemed obscene, and it struck down Ontario's movie rating system. The case centred on movies distributed by Glad Day Bookstore, which was convicted along with its owner in 2002 of distributing a gay porn film that hadn't been approved by the review board.

When Glad Day appealed the conviction and won, the court gave Ontario a year to make the necessary changes. By limiting the Ontario Film Review Board's authority to censor, this legislation also ensures that adults will be able to choose for themselves what film products they see and use, Watson said.

In May, the government decided not to appeal the decision and instead replace its legislation with a modern and responsive legislative framework that meets the needs of Ontario citizens in the 21st century, Watson told the legislature. The Theatres Act hasn't been changed in 40 years, he noted. Forty years ago, the pictures, as they were quaintly called, bear no resemblance to the films of today, he said.

The proposed bill will also allow Ontario to accept ratings for video games and movies from jurisdictions such as other provinces and the United States.

Acting Opposition Leader Bob Runciman said he's concerned the bill leaves no censorship role for the film board. We want to retain in the province some ability to not allow every horrific piece of cellulite to be available to the people of Ontario, he whined.

From Ireland On-Line

The Irish Film Censor, John Kelleher, has announced changes to the certificate categories awarded to films cleared for screening in Ireland. Kelleher said today that a new '16' certificate would be introduced on January 1st for films suitable for viewing by people aged 16 years and over.

He also said the existing '12PG' and '15PG' ratings would be replaced with new '12A' and '15A' certificates. Children under the age of 12 of 15 would only be allowed to watch such films in the company of an adult.

This should hopefully stop so many UK 15 rated film's falling into the Irish 18 rating because of the previous 15PG rating.

Note the shameful continuous attempt to associate adult porn with child porn. As always, those who are happiest to blame porn for the world's ills are also the happiest to contribute to the world's ills.

From AVN

The final piece of funding for an anticipated crackdown on the Adult industry by the American Department of Justice (DOJ) was included in the last minute, $388 billion omnibus appropriations bill passed by Congress a few weeks ago. Congress approved the FBI’s request for ten new agents and almost $2 million earmarked for investigations in support of the DOJ’s Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS).

The Department of Justice was also allowed to add 25 new positions, including 17 attorneys, for the purpose of prosecuting Adult obscenity crimes as well as child pornography, and $2,605,000 to provide the CEOS with the tools they need to do the job.

The Bush Administration claims that, overall, they included $42 million for Justice Department programs that investigate and prosecute child exploitation and fight obscenity—double the amount allocated for those activities in 2001.

While the bulk of the $42 million goes to programs geared toward child pornography, the extra manpower allocated for CEOS prosecutions indicates that 2005 could prove to be a troublesome year for the Adult industry, according to First Amendment attorney Paul Cambria. Compare this to what has been done in the past, and we’re looking at the possibility of a significant crackdown, Cambria told AVN.com. During Operation Woodworm, I don’t think they worked with more than a dozen attorneys—so 17 lawyers should be considered a significant force.”

Operation Woodworm was a task force that led to the prosecution of more than 20 Adult video companies in the late 1980s.

Continuing the trend to obfuscate legal issues pertaining to adult entertainment by associating it with child pornography, the government reports that the “number of child exploitation and adult obscenity investigations and prosecutions increased by more than 300% since 2001.”

Cambria notes that the DOJ is exaggerating their ability to prosecute adult material by lumping it together with child pornography. When you track down their convictions, most of them are to pleas to child porn. Some of them have to do with extreme types of adult entertainment: bestiality, or really hardcore depictions of rape or situations like that, Cambria said. That is not mainstream product, I have not seen any mainstream adult products prosecuted. That’s very significant because 98 percent of the material on the market is in an area that is not being prosecuted, he adds.

Congress also approved $150,000 for the Obscenity Crimes Project (OCP), described as a tool to report Internet obscenity crimes. The OCP is basically the Morality in Media Web site, obscenitycrimes.org.

Well New Zealand has sunk well down in my estimation. There can't be many civilised countries around the world that treat their people so badly over owning a bog-standard computer game.

Postal 2 was passed 18 uncut in Britain.

From www.censorship.govt.nz

The Office of Film & Literature Censorship has classified the PC game Postal 2 as "objectionable" meaning that it is banned in New Zealand. It has been banned because the Office determined that its availability was "likely to be injurious to the public good."

Every classification is tailored to remedy the injury that could be caused if a publication were to be made available to the public. The injury that the Office found Postal 2 likely to cause could not be remedied by anything short of a ban. The legal consequences that flow from a ban reflect the gravity of the harm likely to be caused by the game's availability.

In classifying Postal 2, the Office found that:

The game is designed, and has the capacity, to allow the player to test how much violence and humiliation he or she can inflict on human beings and animals in a variety of everyday settings and circumstances.

The player’s ability to elect the amount, type and speed with which the violence is escalated into extreme cruelty requires an antisocial attitudinal shift (and reinforces such attitudes amongst those who already have them) that is likely to be injurious to the public good.

One of the consequences of the ban is that it is now illegal, under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, to possess Postal 2 in New Zealand. Anyone who possesses this game is liable to a fine of $2,000 (s131). Anyone who supplies, distributes, exhibits, displays or advertises Postal 2 could be imprisoned for up to a year or fined $20,000. Incorporated distributors and retailers could face a fine of $50,000 (s124). Likewise any person importing Postal 2 risks seizure of the game as well as 6 months in jail or a fine of $10,000 (s209 of the Customs and Excise Act).

The game has not been available through shops in New Zealand but any person in possession of a copy should either destroy it or send it to the Department of Internal Affairs Censorship Compliance Unit (PO Box 805, Wellington).

Bans are not lightly entertained. When they are imposed, it is because there is no other way of mitigating the risk of injury to the public good. In this case, the need to protect the public good from injury outweighed the right of individuals to entertain themselves with the callous and brutal gameplay in Postal 2.

From www.refused-classification.com

Accent Film Distribution had 9 Songs classified X18+ (Contains Sexually Explicit Material) on November 11th 2004. The 35mm print is listed as running 69mins.

It is very unusual to see a mainstream film such as this classified X18+. Other titles that contain real sex such as Baise-Moi and Anatomy of Hell would not be be awarded such a rating due to their violent content. 9 Songs must therefore contain no violent content.

Although this is not a ban, it does severely restrict Accent's ability to distribute the film. A theatrical release is now impossible, and a DVD could only be rented in the ACT/NT, or supplied to other States by mail-order.

It has already been passed uncut for theatrical release in the UK and Ireland.

This should be rated R18+ in Australia.
Expect an appeal!

Murder, maiming & torture is perfectly ok but strong language on TV is totally verboten.

Based on an article from The Sunday Herald

E-mail complaints from angry right-wing viewers are flooding federal regulators this weekend following the unedited broadcast on Remembrance Day of the film Saving Private Ryan.

In fact, one third of the local TV stations affiliated with national network ABC, owned by Disney, refused to air the critically acclaimed second world war blockbuster because it contains swear words. The Oscar-winning film about D-Day, directed by Steven Spielberg, also includes graphic, realistic violence.

The 66 stations, from Boston to Detroit and Honolulu, said they feared sanctions from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for airing “profanity” during prime evening hours. That was despite the fact that ABC had promised to cover any fine by the commission, whose members are appointed by its president.

Each TV station could face a fine of £18,000 if found to have aired “indecent” material. Under long-standing guide lines, profanity is banned from 6am to 10pm on America’s publicly owned broadcast channels, but not on cable channels.

It would clearly have been our preference to run the movie,” says Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, which owns three of the stations. “We think it is a patriotic, artistic tribute to our fighting forces.

Initially, only 20 stations were expected to opt out. The 1998 movie has been shown twice before on ABC, to some complaints from viewers but without TV stations baling.

Previously, regulators have permitted some programmes with swearing to be aired when the language is justified artistically by the context. According to an agreement between Spielberg and the television network ABC, the film could not be edited for artistic reasons.

The national mood is different now, and not just because of the election results. “Moral values” were cited by 22% of Americans as the top issue in the November 2 vote, according to pollsters.

Conservative Christian nutters, including the American Family Association, are also rallying against the new film Kinsey, released this weekend to critical acclaim, and starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.

The ideas in the film, directed by Oscar-winner Bill Condon promote pre-marital sex, which leads to abortion and Aids, claims the group Catholic Exchange.

The American Family Association of Nutters also calls for a general boycott of Disney, because the company has encouraged gays to visit its theme parks, and of food giant Procter & Gamble for hiring gays.

From The Register

The US Government is attempting to block efforts to find out who seized Indymedia's  servers in London last month. Indymedia were publishing several anti capitalist websites.  The Government has filed a motion in San Antonio District Court opposing the Electronic Frontier Foundation's motion to unseal the court order which resulted in the seizures, and arguing among other things that unsealing would "seriously jeopardize" an "ongoing criminal terrorism investigation".

We have of course only the US Government's word on that, as the foreign country which actually wanted the information checked the no-publicity box, and the US Government would like to keep it that way.

In the specific circumstances of Indymedia, a process that was started in Texas resulted in the removal of servers in London, knocking out numerous Indymedia web sites. According to the US, Inydmedia has no standing to complain about this or to seek redress, or to find out what it was supposed to have been doing, or who said it was doing it. The UK Government insists the whole matter is nothing to do with it, while the US Government says the matter is closed, flashing the Terrorism-word to be on the safe side.

It never ceases to amaze me that those that most like to blame porn for the ills of the world are the most likely to support the use of brutal force to achieve their warped view of morality

From AVN

George Warmonger Bush has accepted the resignation of Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Ashcroft sent a five-page, handwritten letter to Bush Tuesday announcing his plan to resign.

A consistent and vocal critic of Adult content, Ashcroft’s resignation will generally be seen by the industry as a positive development, but not everyone is quite so sanguine about what Ashcroft’s resignation augurs for the business.

This spells an uncertain future for the Adult industry, said Lawrence Walters, an industry attorney with the law firm Weston, Garrou & DeWitt. Although many in this industry have hoped for Ashcroft's ouster, Bush's current indebtedness to the evangelicals may mean that we end up with someone worse, with a clear axe to grind against erotica. This situation bears close scrutiny.

There has also been unconfirmed speculation within and without the industry that Ashcroft is exiting the Department of Justice in anticipation of being nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court, should a spot open up. But Ashcroft was cryptic rather than clear about his plans for the near future.

Bush has now nominated White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales to succeed Attorney General John Ashcroft. Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme Court justice who considered a likely candidate for the Supreme Court, is a long time confident of Bush’s.  

The nomination is not yet official, but Whitehouse spokesman Scott McClellan suggested that the announcement may come today.

Gonzales would then need to be confirmed by the Senate, where he may face opposition that could mirror the difficulty Ashcroft had winning his confirmation.

Good to see Britain leading the way for once

Based on an article from Stuff

The most sexually explicit film in British cinema history is set to screen in New Zealand. Michael Winterbottom's Nine Songs caused a ripple of controversy on its British release over graphic, unsimulated sex scenes featuring penetration, masturbation and oral sex. The film passed British film censors uncut.

Rialto Entertainment chief executive Kelly Rogers, who had not seen the film, confirmed he hoped to screen it in New Zealand early next year. It's a quality film from a well-known director, you hope people will judge a film on its merits, more than just the titillation factor. This film raises real problems because there's probably nothing really it could be captured under (in censorship laws) to ban it . . . but by allowing it we are signalling that hardcore pornography is acceptable in public places.

But Kiwi moral nutters, the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards (SPCS), is warning that showing the film in mainstream cinemas such as Rialto will open the door to hardcore pornography on the big screen. But SPCS spokesnutter David Lane said the society was concerned because Nine Songs pushed the envelope between porn and art.

AdvertisementAdvertisementExperts say it is likely the film will pass here with an "18" rating. Auckland University film and media studies lecturer Dr Misha Kavka said censorship laws meant films with explicit sex were usually rated "18", unless they were violent or actors were under the age of consent.  Kavka said the film's voyeuristic nature and close-up shots were more likely to make viewers uncomfortable than the graphic sex.

From Canoe

There's no place for the state in the living rooms of the nation, the Supreme Court of Canada was told yesterday as it heard the bizarre case of a man caught masturbating by his next-door neighbours. Challenging a conviction for committing an indecent act in a public place, Daryl Clark is testing the legal bounds of when a private home can become a public place. The Nanaimo man was accused of craning and bobbing to view two young girls while pleasing himself in the window of his well-lit living room.

Lawyer Gil McKinnon insisted Clark had no intention to turn his personal apartment into a public stage. Expanding Parliament's intended definition of "public place" could invite state intrusion into homes, he warned.

Clark's case stems from a fall evening in October 2000, when a neighbour noticed him moving back and forth in his living room. After getting a better vantage from another room, the neighbour was convinced he was masturbating and shifting to get a better look at her two daughters who were engrossed in a television program at the time.

The complainant summoned her husband, who used a telescope and binoculars to view the semi-nude Clark.

Joyce DeWitt-Van Oosten, lawyer for B.C.'s attorney general's office, insisted Clark entered the "public world" when he acted as a reckless exhibitionist and extended an "explicit invitation" for people to watch.

But several Supreme Court justices raised eyebrows at the argument, firing questions about how re-interpreting the definition of "public place" might expose any Canadian to criminal sanctions for acts within their own homes. Complainants could have curtailed their exposure by drawing blinds or pulling the curtains, some suggested.

A Vancouver trial judge had earlier concluded Clark had effectively transformed his home to a public place by acting like a "person on stage" with "amazingly physical" behaviour.

From The Register

The Chinese government confirmed this weekend that it has closed 1,600 internet cafes and fined operators a total of 100m yuan ($12m) since March, when it began its crackdown on violent or pornographic content, and other material it considers harmful to public morality.

Government inspectors have checked up on 1.8m cafes since the campaign began, seeking out those letting kids play violent games or access subversive foreign sites. In addition to the 1,600 cafes that have been closed permanently, 18,000 have been shut down for "rectification", according to reports.

Zhang Xinjian, deputy director of the Chinese Ministry of Culture's market department said that "porn, gambling, violence and similar problems have adversely affected the healthy development of the Internet in China".

In June, ISPs were invited to sign up to a self discipline pact to prevent the spread of any material that could threaten "national security (and) social stability". The government has also taken action against online activists, and those using the web and other technologies to share unapproved information.

The government said that since the summer 445 people have been arrested and 1,125 web sites have been shut down.

Indians can't have satellite TV because there is a possibility of viewers being able to subscribe to foreign porn channels.

Based on an article from The Times of India

The direct-to-home (DTH) television service in India is in trouble. An interim order of the Andhra Pradesh High Court said the government should take an undertaking from ASC Enterprises that its subscribers won't have access to porn channels and anti-national/secret messaging. ASC is the only DTH licence holder.

Passing a directive the court said no clearance should be given to ASC or any other DTH applicants without an undertaking to this effect. The court also directed the I&B and home ministries and Trai to review DTH operations and guidelines and come up with fool- proof technological solution to stop transmission facilitation in accessing anti-national messaging and porn channels to DTH subscribers in the country.

This could have an impact on Prasar Bharti's free-to-air DTH venture, which government plans to roll out next month. It is not clear whether Prasar Bharti as a broadcaster would have to give an undertaking to I&B ministry that its subscribers won't have access to porn. Tata-Star is also awaiting government clearance for its DTH venture.

DTH allows bypassing the local cable operator with the help of a pizza-sized satellite dish, a digital set-top box and a SIM card to access TV channels.

The petitioner said a DTH subscriber can buy a conditional access module (CAM) card in the grey market, insert it in the set-top box and have access to porn channels like Blue Kiss Express and Blue Kiss. He also alleged that DTH can be misused by terrorist organisations for secret/anti-national messaging.

The UPA government will have to file an affidavit before the court on its plan of action. Industry experts say it should set up a high-powered technical committee to find a possible solution in the new scenario. While guidelines ban porn channels, they do not state anything on possibility of viewing porn channel using a pirated CAM card. ASC officials said they don't beam any porn channel through its platform.

It's very tough to give an undertaking that DTH subscribers will not have access to porn content. We can only say that we won't broadcast porn channels, said a senior ASC official.

Based on an article from The Irish Independent

A new film features extensive graphic sex scenes, but the censor has chosen not to ban it. Ireland's censor, John Kelleher, has just given the go-ahead to one of the steamiest and most explicit films in the history of mainstream cinema. This week it was reported that 9 Songs, a movie featuring real sex between actors, was passed uncut for public release in Ireland early next year.

Cinemagoers who like a bit of the 'bould thing' as they munch their popcorn in the multiplex will have a feast. The British movie, which opens in Dublin early next year, features close-ups of penetration, oral sex and ejaculation.

Declining to comment on his reasons for passing the film (he will explain when the film is actually released), John Kelleher talked in general terms about his role, suggesting that he no longer sees himself as a censor at all. He hopes that his title will be changed to that of "film classifier".

In all but a tiny of number of cases, the former RTE producer now simply classifies films; and it is up to Irish adults themselves to decide whether they go to see them. The changes over the past few decades reflect the changes in public attitudes to morality, says John Kelleher. Sex is not our primary concern.

It is all a far cry from the early days of censorship, when the stern guardians of public decency held a firm grip on our viewing habits. In the heyday of Catholic supremacy, kissing, dancing, divorce, contraception or any kind of intimacy between consenting adults were all targeted by the censors.

James Montgomery set the tone as the State's first censor when he said of his job: I take the Ten Commandments as my code. According to a fascinating new history, Irish Film Censorship - A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography by Kevin Rockett, Montgomery saw himself as a "moral sieve". To him the greatest danger to Irish society was not Anglicisation, but "Los Angelesation".

After a lengthy struggle in the 1980s and 1990s, Kevin Rockett finally gained access to the archives of the Irish Censor's office in 1998. His new book is the most thorough investigation of Irish film censorship ever published.

A film did not even have to be sexy to incur the censor's wrath. The word virgin was cut from films up until the 1960s and seemingly innocuous phrases such as "Jeepers! Creepers!" were also removed. As late as the 1970s, expressions such as "for Christ's sake!" were excised along with all references to condoms.

It was inevitable that Woody Allen's 1970s comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex would be banned in 1972, but the film was eventually passed with cuts in 1979.

The censor slashed the 'What is Sodomy?' scene in which a shepherd goes to see a doctor and tells him how he has fallen in love with a sheep. His description of their tryst as "the greatest lay I ever had" was cut out. Bizarrely, however, the censor allowed a subsequent scene where the doctor himself falls in love with the sheep. Another scene in which a man is shown enjoying sexual intercourse with a loaf of bread was cut.

One can hardly imagine what Montgomery would have made of 9 Songs, a short feature that charts a relationship from the first date to the break up. The film has already gained a certain notoriety after it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. Although the title refers to nine bands that the couple go to see, music merely provides short breaks between orgasmic episodes; the movie is made up almost entirely of scenes showing genuine sex filmed with hand-held cameras. The lead parts are played by an unknown actress who used the pseudonym Margo Stilley and an English actor Kieran O'Brien, who previously had a role in the TV drama Cracker.

Irish Film Censorship - A Cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography by Kevin Rockett is published next week by Four Courts Press, €65

Based on an article from Reuters

China has sentenced 13 people to prison for trafficking in pornographic DVDs, with the leader getting a 19-year jail term, in its biggest yet case against sellers of the black market films, local media say.

Another three were acquitted in the case heard in the south eastern province of Guangzhou, the People's Court Daily said on Saturday. Details of the other sentences were not immediately available.

The gang was arrested after police in the region found more than 6 million DVDs in raids last March. Most of them were pornographic, and those that were not were illegally produced, the Yangcheng Evening News said.

It said the group had made profits of more than 3.5 million yuan (230,000 pounds) from the sale of the DVDs.

China has been stepping up its battle against adult entertainment, threatening distributors of Internet and mobile phone pornography with life in prison.

It has also shut down hundreds of Web sites and arrested more than 300 in connection with Internet pornography.

From AVN

A county sheriff in Utah is said to have started requiring his deputies to document any and all porn found at crime scenes and during arrests, a policy the American Civil Liberties Union is calling something close to a bid for thought control.

But Cache County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Matt Bilodeau said law enforcement has seen a gradual rise in porn tied to crimes, though he acknowledged that no explicit connection between legal porn and criminal behavior has yet been proven.

Bilodeau likened the new policy to the way law enforcement approaches gang crime. [Gangs] have certain clothes they wear, markings on their houses, tattoos, he told reporters. Like gangs, people who use pornography have associated traits, and we'll define them so we can link them to crimes and pornography.

Utah’s ACLU chapter head, Dani Eyer, would like to know just where the Cache County sheriff got such a notion, comparing the sheriff's edict to rummaging a suspect’s book shelf and trying to build a criminal profile based on the books he reads. "It's one thing to collect evidence to crimes,” Eyer told reporters, “but it's another thing to link thought and association to crime."

Bilodeau said porn has been linked to sex crimes in the past but an overall tie between the material itself and criminal behavior is not yet proven. All the sheriff hopes for, he said, is help identifying the exact extent of any such problem, including help with data for lawmakers to pass laws to protect those who want to be protected.

Eyer isn’t buying that. If it's not part of the crime – not part of the situation they're investigating – it's getting dangerously near the thought control and association control that causes the ACLU concern, she said.

From Metro News

You already need your photo ID to buy booze or cigarettes and now you’ll need it to rent or buy certain video and computer games.

Canadian retailers and entertainment software makers Thursday were to announce a broad initiative aimed at curbing children’s access to violent and age-restricted games, including asking customers to produce photographic identification in some cases.

Called The Commitment to Parents program, the campaign also aims to help parents make the right choices for their children by providing more information and better staff training in the stores, the Retail Council of Canada said Wednesday.

The retailers’ move, which drew praise from parent and teacher organizations, comes amid growing government scrutiny of the software gaming industry. Earlier this year, the Ontario government took the unusual step of slapping a mandatory "restricted" rating on the game title Manhunt.

Jim Watson, Ontario’s minister of consumer and business affairs, was also expected to be on hand to endorse the effort.

Most major Canadian video and computer game retailers already belong to the U.S.-based Entertainment Software Rating Board, which voluntarily rates the games and suggests stores check customers’ ID. The five ratings, which rank the games from "Early Childhood" to "Mature," also provide descriptive comments, such as "Blood" or "Violence."

All major video and computer game stores in Canada belong to the ratings board, including Blockbuster, Rogers, Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

The Ontario government plans to introduce a mandatory ratings system, similar to the one that restricts access to movies, along with hefty fines for retailers that fail to check customers’ ID, steps some other provinces have already taken. The fines under the Ontario Theatres Act range from $25,000 for individuals and a year in jail to $100,000 for corporations.

In the meantime, the retailers’ initiative drew instant praise from parents’ and teachers’ organizations concerned about the amount of violence seen in media by young children.

Despite voluntary ratings and store policies, one of the most popular video games among children in Grades 3 to 6 is Grand Theft Auto, a violent action game rated for age 17-plus, according to a survey for the Canadian Teachers’ Federation.

China's police ministry handed out rewards of up to $240 Sunday to people who reported pornographic Web sites in a campaign to stamp out online porn, the government said.

Some 445 people have been arrested and 1,125 Web sites shut down with the help of public tips since July, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing the Ministry of Public Security.

The ministry handed out rewards of $60-$240, Xinhua said, but the number of people who received them was not reported.

China bans sexually oriented content on its own Web sites and tries to block access to foreign sites deemed pornographic or subversive.

The online crackdown is part of a sweeping official morality campaign launched this year on orders from communist leaders. [The Chinese use of the word morality seems to be synonymous with repression]

Television stations, video-game makers and other suppliers of popular culture have been ordered to reduce or eliminate violent or sexually oriented content.

From ekathimerini

A two-year-old blanket ban on all electronic games, imposed as a desperate measure to prevent illegal gambling, landed Greece in hot water with Brussels yesterday.

The European Commission said it had decided to refer Greece to the European Court of Justice for infringing Union regulations on the free movement of goods and services.

The Commission believes that the law is disproportionate, insofar as it applies not only to equipment (slot machines) and games of chance which might give rise to social concerns, but also to games of an entirely different nature which are not, in themselves, a source of particular disquiet with regard to public order or consumer protection, a Commission statement said.

Or, more prosaically, as Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd put it, the way the law is drafted means that it is theoretically illegal to play with your GameBoy at home or even to play snakes on your mobile phone. Fortunately, in practice the law is not applied to prevent playing computer games at home, but is applied to prevent the installation or repair of computer games at places like cyber cafes, he added.

The law was passed in early 2002, after Socialist MP and head of Parliament’s committee against gambling Alexandros Chryssanthakopoulos was caught playing on an unlicensed slot machine. Then-ruling PASOK expelled the MP, and swiftly pulled the plug on all electronic games, openly admitting it was incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines.

New Democracy, which came to power in the March 7 elections, had denounced the law at the time. But yesterday the Commission said it had resorted to legal action after Greece ignored an official warning on the law in April 2004.

From the BBC

US regulators have fined TV network Fox nearly $1.2m (£970,000) for an episode of a reality show which showed strippers at a stag party. The fine tops the $550,000 fine levied at CBS for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at this year's Super Bowl.

The Federal Communications Commission said the sexual nature of the Married by America footage was "inescapable". FCC members voted unanimously to fine each of the 169 Fox TV stations that aired the programme $7,000 (£5,685) each, bringing the total fine to $1,183,000 (£960,000).

Married by America, which was not a hit in the ratings, asked the voting public to create couples from a line-up of single contestants. The couples then went through the rituals of dating, though none ultimately married.

The controversial episode aired in April 2003, and featured explicit sexual scenes from hen and stag parties.

Even with Fox's editing, the episode includes scenes in which partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers' bodies in a sexually suggestive manner, said the FCC. Although the nudity was pixelated, even a child would have known that the strippers were topless and that sexual activity was being shown.

The FCC received 159 complaints about the show, following the broadcast. Federal law prevents non-cable TV and radio stations from showing sexual content between 0600 and 2200, when children are most likely to be watching. Married by America aired at 2000 or 2100, depending on which Fox station broadcast it.

Thanks to Stelios

Only months after reforming Greece’s anti-terrorist laws, the government is seeking to extend the powers that authorities have to snoop on personal communications such as telephone conversations and e-mail exchanges, legal sources said on Saturday.

The Council of State is currently examining a 16-page draft presidential decree, which will seek to allow exceptions to the privacy law in cases concerning organized crime, terrorism and threats to national security.

Effectively, the presidential decree will hand security forces greater power to observe various types of communications by suspects. These include telephone conversations, Internet chat rooms, e-mails, Internet banking transactions, mobile phone text messages, credit card purchases, letters and packages. The draft decree stipulates that these enhanced powers of observation must not result in an individual’s privacy rights being overridden unnecessarily or for longer than required.

After pressure from fellow member states, Greece passed new anti-terrorist legislation in June, coming into line with EU standards just weeks before the Olympics. According to the June law, the statute of limitations for terrorist actions punishable with a life sentence was extended from 20 to 30 years. New provisions included the adoption of an EU-wide arrest warrant, jailing terrorist leaders for at least 10 years and punishing those providing assistance to such groups.

From IT News

Upcoming game Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude has been refused classification and banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) due to its sexual content.

This comes hot on the heels of the refusal of classification last week of the game Manhunt after its initial MA15+ classification was reviewed.

Leisure Suit Larry is based around the bumbling journeys of a suit-clad character Larry Lovage who takes part in "extra curricular" activities at college. Larry attempts to woo and have sex with or play sexualised games with a series of female characters, an OFLC report said.

The game was officially refused classification on 9 September. The report said the computer game contains obscured and/or implied sexual activity and obscured and partial nudity involving stylised, animated characters. An OFLC spokesperson confirmed that the title had been banned and could not be imported, hired or sold to the public.

Publisher Vivendi Universal Games has declined to comment on the decision about Leisure Suit Larry, which is a highly anticipated follow-up to a successful series of adventure games during the 1980s and 1990s.

From The Register

Internet cafés in parts of India face closure if new regulations forcing them to provide police with names and addresses of all their customers are introduced. Under the new rules, visitors to Internet cafés will have to show their ID cards or be photographed.

The governor of Karnataka State in southern India is reported to be close to passing the new law, which is desinge to fight cybercrime. Similar measures are also being mulled for Mumbai and Maharashtra State.

Media rights group Reporters Without Borders condemned the law change as a threat to [the] confidentiality of cybercafés. Rules about to be adopted in Karnataka and Maharashtra states do not observe the standards of a democracy in protecting personal freedoms. The fight against terrorism and cybercrime should not lead to systematic monitoring of Internet users.

Indeed, critics warned that the measures will do little to prevent cybercrime and could lead to many cybercafés closing as users shun the regulated cybercentres.

Said Ashish Saboo, president of the Association of Public Internet Access Providers (APIAP)These new measures are likely to dissuade many Internet users from going to cybercafés and could lead to closure of almost half of them. Keeping this type of register is completely ineffective to fight computer fraud or cyberterrorism.

From The Guardian

The latest feature film from the creators of South Park is facing the box office kiss of death NC-17 rating because of a scene showing simulated oral sex between marionettes.
The makers of Team America: World Police have reportedly gone to great lengths, modifying the offending scene nine times for submission to the Motion Picture Association of America, the US film classification authority. They are keen to secure an R rating, which would allow under-18s to see the film when accompanied by an adult.

The makers, directors Matt Stone and Trey Parker and producer Scott Rudin, are contesting the MPAA classification, saying that the film doesn't show anything that's not been seen before in other R-rated movies. And besides, Rudin told the Hollywood Reporter, our characters are made of wood and have no genitalia. If the puppets did to each other what we show them doing, all they'd get is splinters.

A resolution to this dispute is particularly urgent because the film-makers are contractually obliged to deliver an R-rated film for release by October 15, but the film is scheduled for sneak previews this coming weekend.

Stone and Parker are no strangers to ratings wrangles - their 1999 film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was also the subject of a very long and public battle with the MPAA, but ultimately got an R rating.

Parker pointed to the differences between the MPAAs treatment of simulated violence and simulated sex. Team America features violent scenes in which a Tim Robbins puppet is set on fire and a Susan Sarandon puppet is dropped off a 20-story building - all acts that passed MPAA muster. We blow Janeane Garofalo's head clean off, [but for the MPAA] it's all about the positions of the dolls having sex, It's not funny - it's tragic.

Based on an article from The Register

Australia has banned Manhunt, the computer game dubiously claimed to have influenced the murder of a UK teenager earlier this year.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), a cross-state body, this week said it had revoked the game's MA15+ certificate. That classification indicates which age groups any given title can be sold to, in this case only people over the age of 15. This week's move in effect renders the sale of Manhunt in Australia illegal - the game is not suitable for anyone to play, the OFLC effectively said.

The removal of the certificate follows a demand from Attorney General Philip Ruddock.

In the Classification Review Board's opinion, the game warrants a refusal of classification because it contains elements beyond those set out in the classification guidelines and legislation for a computer game at the MA15+ classification, the OFLC said in a statement.

Manhunt has been on sale in Australia for almost a year now, so arguably the ban may do little to impact demand for the product. More to the point, if it's not suitable now, what made it so on its release in October 2003? The OFLC said it will provide a more detailed rationale in a few weeks' time.