Extreme pr0n suspect has his internet access suspended A new threat for those suspected of ogling extreme porn arrives today in the shape of an internet ban pending trial. This is what lawyers might term "an interesting idea", and one that could come to cause grief far more widely if it catches on. Phillip Heard, aged 57, of Coed Fedwen, Birchgrove, in Swansea, faces 19 charges of …
Neither justice or sense matter here any more. You can abuse imaginary people apparently now days. So expecting the law and its corrupt officers to abide by any kind of law is like expect a dog to stop pooping.
The nations gone crazy and it isn't going back to being sane for a good few decades. The puritans are in charge, and the populace (and media) are happy about it. They want to feel safe in bs cotton wool. They all make me sick, but I'm tired of thinking about it and you're better off punching the smug basterds that support this kind of crap in the face then trying to argue with them becouse they're too mentally crippled and afraid to use their brains anymore. Also you'll get off with a caution and feel better about life. Win all round I think.
Also as far as MPs are concerned I suspect if their expenses can be altered retrospectively then why not everything else. Que retrospective laws and tax hikes no doubt.
I fail to see how having these pictures causes anyone any harm in the first place. So he had some pictures of adults doing some odd things. Dear god, would somebody please think of the... adults? If this guy hurt someone, sure, put him away for a few years. From the article, however, I fail to see how any harm was caused to a person or society as a whole.
Anyways. If he can't buy any product that can access the Internet, then he can't have any kind of computer. Nearly every cell phone these days have the ability to access the Internet, too. Even an eBook reader, like the Kindle, could be banned to him. Many modern televisions have the ability to be networked - and I am guessing that, not long from now, it will be difficult to find one that can't be wired up.
Might as well just go live in the forest as a luddite.
Because they are punishing literally a Thought Crime, not an actual crime.
If someone has a picture of someone else causing harm to another person, then its the person in the picture causing the harm, not anyone holding the photo of that act.
But its even worse than punishing a Thought Crime, because they are punishing a specific (and very twisted) interpretation of the image, assuming everyone who views the image has the same bad thoughts about the image. In other words, we cannot assume everyone who owns the image has the same interpretation of the image plus also the context of ownership of the photo totally transforms the reason for owning the photo and so totally transforms the owners thoughts about the photo. For example what if the photo were owned by a psychologist researching the whole subject. Yet this law is punishing people based on the assumption they are viewing the image for a specific bad purpose. Assumptions are not law and should not be law, but this law is based on just such a specific assumption.
Also this whole concept of punishing a Thought Crime is highly contradictory. For example owning a photo of a bank robbery doesn't make someone a bank robber. Yet this violent porn ownership Thought Crime law is trying to make exactly that kind of association.
(If someone once worked at a bank that was robbed, they could very well probably hold onto a photo of something happening there, it wouldn't mean they were a bank robber. There are many interpretations of the image. Maybe someone is researching a film on bank robbers, maybe someone was in a bank when it was robbed, maybe the person with the photo knew someone in the bank photo. Yet this law is punishing for a specific very extreme assumption of intent to own the photo).
Its very ironic the prosecution repeatedly shows the most extreme interpretations of the images they attempt to punish other people for, thereby showing they have some of the most extreme thoughts about image.
Strict liability means that mens rea ("guilty mind") does not have to be proven in relation to the actus reus ("guilty act") in order for a conviction to be obtained.
In other words the defendant has to prove that the image is *not* "grossly offensive" or "liable to cause serious injury" etc, which is virtually impossible.
Let's hear it for Tick-Box Justice...
he asks for a number of other counts to be taken into consideration... like every other image on his disc, e.g. Olympic 2012 logo, Gordon Brown, etc, etc...
If they are taken into consideration, then every other copy of those images is also "grossly offensive", and the Police have to make widespread arrests.
To avoid that, the prosecution would have to argue that, e.g. Gordon Brown's face is not "grossly offensive".
Or am I thinking far too logically and consistently? Need some brain stimulant... see icon.
I think that it is grossly unfair for someone like Mr Heard to have their name released by the police and published before trial so that whether ir not he is found guilty in the end he will be forever tarnished by it. Grossly unfair and unjust. As for the law itself. The only other law I would like to see made by this incompetent Labour Govt is a law that makes the Labour Party unlawful for treason !!
While I am completely and utterly against this 'law', and the absolutely shocking way Labour has managed to bring it about, what are the views of the other parties? I haven't read what the Conservatives would do about it if they got into power.
I was going to goggle 'Extreme porn conservatives', but I suspect that would also land me in the clink!
>a requirement that Mr Heard does not access the internet or buy any item from which it is possible to use the internet <.
How would the court know if he breached this condition? This is a condition of HIS bail, and therefore places no obligation on his ISP to tell anybody about his use of his connection. Or, he borrows a laptop and goes wardriving, uses someone else's wifi. Who would know?
This is the kind of ignorant stupidity that brings the law into disrepute. Unenforceable law is bad law.
a bloke who's been deemed guilt before his trial. Is that entirely legal. Any laywers out there?
Does this mean that BDSM clubs are now illegal in this country? If thinking of somebody being harmed for sexual gratification is illegal, surely the actual act is too. Not that making BDSM clubs illegal would curb my social life, but why won't somebody think of the masochists.
No, thanks to Regina vs Church 1996 after the Club Whiplash raid where the CPS tried to get a conviction for "running a disorderly house". The Judge asked the Jury "Do you think this sort of behaviour is acceptable in this day and age" and the Jury said "Yes".
The only problem is that the Operation Spanner case R vs Laskey, Jaggard, Brown et al, says that if you leave marks which are "more than trifling or transient" then you are committing an offence...
Confused? You will be...
Pretty ironic that while it's legal to use a BDSM club in this country it's illegal to make, view or possess images of what goes on in said establishments.
So if Max Mosely was caught with a photo of one of his sessions stored on his own computer would he be in big trouble?
"The issue with the bail condition is that, under Human Rights Law, it could well be argued that this condition is itself a punishment, delivered in advance of court hearing and verdict. As such, it may constitute a breach of the Human Rights Act."
and
"However, if the offences were committed on the dates given, Mr Heard ought to walk free: the extreme porn law did not come into being until 26 January 2009 and is not, as far as we are aware, retrospective in its application."
Don't worry, they'll never let the small matter of that awkward thing we call The Law get in the way of thinking of the children/animals/terrorists/etc.
"...portrayed an act which "resulted, or was likely to result in serious injury" to a person's breasts and genitals, as well as images of a person "performing an act of intercourse" with a dog and a horse..."
The witch-hunt squad strikes back.... and caught the voyeur instead of the real sinners that created such material.
Alright then... throw him into the fire and then pray to whatever God you prefer to have pity on his sinful soul but to pray more on the sanity of our demoniac society.
Plod would surely have confiscated his machines, with content intact to be used as evidence in the event of going to court.
'Course all Plod has to do is give him the machines back, with said filth, then immediately re-nick him as he's now in posession after the Act came into being.
Wouldn't surprise me one iota.
Many years ago...
Well, I was curious. And I wouldn't go near certain websites now, even if the artists do have Wikipedia entries. No names, but I know I shall not forget them,
And do I have to throw away my backups, because that might be what is needed to avoid an accusation that I'm still in possession of extreme porn.
Would that be an offense going back to 1996? Or thereabouts.
But yeah, the dates are odd.
With such a bizarre attempt to prosecute (and before the prosecution, punish) someone who did something that was legal at the time, could it be there was something else the local plod didn't like him for, but they couldn't find anything else to pin on him?
... you might be getting closer to the nitty-gritty here. Seems to me an important point is how anyone knew. Either he was very careless about who used/saw his computer, or Mr Plod has been on yet another fishing expedition to get a conviction on anything at all other than some original suspicion or offence they were unable to get past a court.
Ultimately, NuLabour's new Law of Innuendo means it probably doesn't now matter if the guy is innocent or guilty - the damage is being done in advance of trial. If he walks free tomorrow he probably won't have seen the last of Mr Plod now they have his number - hell hath no fury like a policeman scorned. In the meantime everything from family life to employment prospects may have been irretrievably damaged.
Welcome to Banana_Republic_UK.com.... Admittance by funny handshake only...
It's obvious really, THEY sent the email from a throwaway hotmail account, waited to see a recieved read receipt and then raided his house.
The reason? He complained when plod stopped him taking a picture of a chip shop (or he was tall in Chatham high street; take your pick)
...thinking about it you know, I don't like my old boss...
....."possessed images which explicitly and realistically portrayed an act which "resulted, or was likely to result in serious injury" to a person's breasts and genitals,"....
Google "Robot Chicken She-Ra TPM" (great subject for a SPAM message!). Watch the video. Now please go to jail.
It's almost as though I can't blame the law/police/courts.
I know, thats a shocking point of view, but they are enmired in the same social dross as surrounds the rest of us. They are panicking over the idea of moral standards declining in society, when they have simply failed to realise that it is not morality that is under threat, but reason itself.
Our society is beginning to pride itself on its own stupidity; it's "Accept and Obey" culture'; it's disposable economy and sound-bite politics. It is ceasing to question, reason, critique and is being conditioned to conform, consume and commute instead.
If it was thinking instead; if it was using reason instead then it might just understand this concept:
"Law should protect people, not ideas."
Morality is an idea, pornography is an idea, social concordance itself is an idea, but they aren't people. No one is harmed by these ideas in and of themselves. These things are concepts, and in and of themselves, are harmless; it is only through the activity of people that these concepts are made manifest, and when these actions harm others we should indeed act through law to protect the victims, but when they remain only as ideas then I would submit that no harm is being done.
To pursue the prosecution of an idea, whether expressed by words, images, music, speech or any other media is to prosecute the freedom of thought itself. It is to create the Thought-Crime, to coin an ever cheapening catchphrase. Such activity is surely doomed to failure, as the consciousness cannot be effectively legislated any more than dreams might be. Ergo, the pursuit of such legislation is, in essence, itself directly harmful by its lack of productivity or the disquiet that brings to our otherwise peaceful lives.
So yes, by all means pursue the traffickers, the child pornographers, those who cause suffering to animals, the purveyors of violence and fear, but leave those who hold ideas purely as images alone.
If you cannot leave us to think and dream as we wish, then I know where the shadow of law should really be falling, for it becomes clear where the measure of harm actually arises.
"We are oft to blame in this, - / 'Tis too much proved - that with devotion's visage/ And pious action we do sugar o'er/ The devil himself." - Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
"I have not come for what you hoped to do. I've come for what you did." ~ V for Vendetta
I assume the reason why he is banned from accessing the internet is because a simple web search would show him at least one good defence for the charges against him. The next two steps are to threaten him with draconian punishments and tell him he can avoid them by signing a confession within five minutes.
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