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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 18 declined, 1 accepted (19 total, 5.26% accepted)

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Submission + - 'Offensive' Virtual Images of Kids Banned in UK

Submitted by Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: In a country where politics regularly trumps the genuine protection of children, the parliament of the United Kingdom has now criminalised the possession of drawings and cartoons which feature children engaged in (or witnessing) sexual acts. The law is a result of lobbying by various commercialised "charities" who hope to gain publicity through their politicial acitivies, arguing that images of virtual children could incite the commission of contact offences against children, even though research indicates that virtual images reduce the likelihood of viewers molesting children. The new law prohibits any image which "focuses solely or principally on a [virtual] child's genitals or anal region" or depicts any sexual act which involves virtual children or is witnessed by virtual children, and is "pornographic" and "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character.
Privacy

Submission + - The ISA and Police State UK (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "Using ineffective, feel-good "child protection" legislation to rob citizens of their inherent rights has become a favourite pastime of the British government. A particularly disturbing example is the creation of the "Independent Safeguarding Authority" (ISA), which will be tasked with ensuring that over 11 million adults are "suitable" to have even the smallest amount of contact with children. According to new guidelines summarised by The Telegraph, the ISA will collect and analyse information about the "interests, attitudes, relationships and lifestyle" of individuals, as well as their links with "anti-social peers". People who are considered "unsuitable" to have contact with children will be barred from careers or volunteer positions which involve any kind of contact with people under the age of 18, and those who pursue such a career but refuse to undergo the detailed analysis of their private lives could be prosecuted in a criminal court. The ISA is immune to litigation in relation to mistakes made when barring a person from a career, so anybody who suffers losses from false allegations made by the body will be unable to claim damages. The creation of a body to which 11 million people may be required to submit detailed information about their lives appears to be yet another excuse to monitor and profile millions of individuals. The power to block poeple on the basis of their beliefs is equally disturbing, as it could be an attempt to prevent people from influencing children if their beliefs are deemed to threaten the social order or the authority of the state."
Privacy

Submission + - "Sex" and "Porn" in Childrens' Top (norton.com) 1

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "While Australia, China, the UK and other subversive states clamber to implement "family friendly" web filters under the guise of protecting children from stumbling across the horrors of pornography, data collected by Symantec suggests that children themselves are busy looking for places where they can find the stuff. The data — collected by Symantec's "OnlineFamily" software, which is installed by parents on their childrens' workstations — indicates that "sex" is the fourth most popular search term amongst children, with "porn" in sixth place and "boobs" at number twenty-eight. The twenty-first most popular search term is "Norton Safety Minder", the application which the OnlineFamily software uses to monitor computer usage and report back to Symantec's servers. While many parents will presumably be horrified at the thought of little Timmy searching for online pornography, their primary concern should be the software's violation of an individual's privacy and the possibility of identity theft resulting from detailed usage information being reported to a foreign server. The evidence published by Symantec actually contradicts the prudish belief that children are offended and corrupted by online pornography."
Censorship

Submission + - The Perverse Politics of Virtual Porn

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "In 2006, the UK Home Office (which has since devolved many of its powers to the Ministry of Justice) announced plans to criminalise the possession of "non-photographic images of child sexual abuse" (BBC, 2006). The justification for this law was based upon several assumptions, none of which are supported empirically.

The first and most significant claim of ministers, made in the original "consultation on possession of non-photographic visual depictions of child sexual abuse", was that "fantasy images themselves fuel abuse of real children by reinforcing potential abusers' inappropriate feelings towards children" (Home Office, 2007). The Home Office noted "an absence of research into the effects of these images", but proceeded to ask if their proposal was "nevertheless justified".

Upon publishing the "summary of responses and next steps", the Ministry of Justice (2008) was unable to provide any evidence for the claims made in its paper, explaining that it had taken the decision to legislate against computer-generated images on the basis of a public consultation (in which the opinions expressed were far from unanimous) and closed meetings with "interested parties". Those "interested parties" were comprised mostly of charities which have a financial stake in the matter, as well as the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre, which receives funding to investigate potential sexual offences committed online and is currently seeking public support for a doubling of its funding.

Evidence-based legislation?

In 2009, the Coroners and Justice Bill — which intends to criminalise the possession of virtual child erotica — was introduced by Jack Straw and Lord Bach. The accompanying research paper (Almandras et al, 2009) cites a report by the Longford Committee (1972) and Ray Wyre's appendix in Tim Tate's (1990) book on child pornography as evidence, however both works discuss photographic pornography rather than computer-generated or drawn imagery.

The Longford Committee's findings were published several years before the "discovery" of child pornography, which was not the subject of public or scientific debate prior to 1975 (Stanley, 1987; O'Donnell & Milner, 2007) and was not subject to legislation until 1977 in the USA or 1978 in the UK. The committee's findings therefore cannot be taken as conclusive evidence with regard to child pornography, nor can they be assumed to be applicable to computer-generated pornography (which was not available at the time). The findings of the committee — as cited in the research paper — are also rather vague. According to the Ministry of Justice, the committee's report stated that "pornography clearly must have some effect" but admitted that "only in very rare cases can a causal connection between pornography and anti-social behaviour be conclusively proved" (Longford Committee, cited by Almandras et al, 2009). The evidence provided by the Longford Committee clearly does not support the beliefs expressed by legislators in proposing the prohibition of virtual child erotica.

Child pornography had been acknowledged and formed part of the criminological discourse when Tate's book was published, however there is no empirical (or even anecdotal) evidence of the existence of computer-generated child pornography prior to the publication of Tate's book. Wyre's argument was based solely upon his experiences in working with sex offenders at the time, and was therefore based upon his observations of how offenders allegedly used photographic child pornography. Even if one discounts the fact that virtual pornography is yet another step away from reality in relation to photographic pornography, the reliability of Wyre's argument remains debatable. One must remember that a correlation may not involve a direct causal link; while many of the contact child sex offenders which Wyre studied may also have used pornography — and may have used it as an excuse for their behaviour — it is quite possible that the contact offenders would have committed a contact offence regardless of their use of pornography. If, as Wyre suggested, a contact child sex offender "will use anything — including child pornography or child erotica" to "make his behaviour seem as normal as possible" (Wyre, cited by Almandras et al, 2009), child erotica is not necessary for the facilitation of contact offending, as the offender would find other ways to justify their behaviour. The government's use of Wyre's work in supporting the proposed legislation is actually a serious misinterpretation (or misuse) of the text and does not justify the ban which is proposed by legislators.

Contrary to the largely irrelevant research cited in the research paper for the proposed legislation, there is a significant body of evidence which suggests that child erotica has a positive effect on the behaviour of people with a sexual interest in children, providing a sexual relief which reduces the likelihood of contact offending. Sheldon & Howitt (2008) found that despite the popular belief that fantasy leads to action, "fantasy deficit may be involved in contact offending against children" as contact offenders are unable to generate mastubatory fantasies without engaging in contact offences. The correlation between liberalisation of pornography laws and a decrease in cases of contact offences is also worthy of note here. A major correlation was observed in Denmark and West Germany (O'Carroll, 2000), while a correlation between an increase in the availability of virtual pornography (including child and rape pornography) and a decrease in contact offending has been observed in Japan (Diamond & Uchiyama, 1999). While the O'Carroll and Diamond & Uchiyama studies only prove a correlation, it is unlikely that the increased availability of child pornography and a decrease in contact offences against children could have a common causal factor, indicating that the legal availability of pornography (both child and adult) reduces the risk of sexually harmful behaviour.

A charitable concern?

Two of the primary campaigners in favour of the prohibition of cartoon child erotica are the NSPCC (a children's charity with statutory powers) and CHIS (a coalition of charities in which the NSPCC is an influential member). In a response to the Scottish consultation on the proposed prohibition of virtual child erotica, CHIS argued that "advances in technology have made it possible to create materials which are entirely artificial but which, in turn, are indistinguishable from photographs or videos of real events" (CHIS, 2008). Such an argument is clearly misleading as a reason for legislating against virtual child erotica, as erotic photo-realistic images of children are already illegal under UK law and possession of such images carries the same maximum sentence as actual photographs (Sentencing Advisory Panel, 2006). It is evident that CHIS was already aware of the illegality of photo-realistic indecent images of children when they responded to the consultation, as they quoted from the relevant law on the same page of their response. It is therefore difficult to interpret the CHIS response as anything other than an attempt to mislead the public, media, and undereducated civil servants.

Before progressing to a further analysis of the children's charities' use of misleading information, it would be careless not to mention that the same manipulative tactics are also being used by politicians. When the Ministry of Justice announced the intention to criminalise virtual child erotica, Justice Minister Maria Eagle issued a press release claiming that "paedophiles could be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons" (Eagle, 2008). Regardless of whether or not this is true (there is no evidence for or against the claim), Section 69(3) of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act (2008) criminalised the possession, distribution, showing and making of images derived from indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children three weeks prior to Eagle's announcement. In short, the "loophole" which Eagle referred to had already been closed. The implications of her announcement are therefore quite disturbing; either the Justice Minister was unaware of the content of a major bill which had just been enacted, or she was deliberately attempting to mislead and manipulate the media and public into supporting her department's proposals.

Despite the misleading statements of CHIS, the motivations of the NSPCC themselves are of the greatest concern. The NSPCC has a history of using sensationalism, half-truths and deception in its campaigns for donations. In 2007, it emerged that the NSPCC had mailed fake stories of child abuse — presented as genuine accounts — in order to garner donations from concerned members of the public (The Daily Mail, 2007). Prior to this discovery, Sociology professor Frank Furedi (2004) described the NSPCC as "a danger to the nation's children". His article drew attention to the NSPCC's use of expensive marketing companies and misleading statistics to frighten both parents and children into donating to the organisation. Similar concerns were also expressed in an article in the Observer (Rayner, 1999) and by the Social Issues Research Centre (1999).

Of greater concern with regard to the proposed law against virtual child erotica is the NSPCC's conflict of interest in responding to the proposal. Unbeknownst to the general public (and possibly even to legislators), the NSPCC conducts a significant number of sex offender therapy programmes (NSPCC, 2008). The amount of funding which they receive for conducting such programmes has not been disclosed, however intense public fears over child sex offenders and the costs associated with finding staff who are prepared to work with such offenders would suggest that the NSPCC receives significant funding for carrying out this service. Considering the revenue which the NSPCC is likely to generate from providing such services, expecting them to provide objective input on a proposal which will increase the number of people who use those services is highly optimistic.

Another argument proposed by the NSPCC and by other proponents of the legislation is that the availability of cartoon child erotica implies tolerance of child sexual abuse, therefore encouraging paedophiles to act out (Hilton, 2009). The first problem with this argument is that the broad definition of "prohibited images" in the Coroners and Justice Bill includes images which simply focus on certain areas of a child's body and are perceived to be "grossly offensive" or "disgusting" (Coroners and Justice Bill, 2009), even if no sexual activity is depicted. Furthermore, the claim that the availability of cartoon child erotica — even if it depicts sexual abuse — implies a tolerance of child abuse is unfounded and grossly illogical. Firstly, a glance at (legal) discussion boards for paedophiles — such as Boychat.org and Annabelleigh.net — indicates that paedophiles are extremely aware of the negativity of attitudes towards paedophilia per se as well as child sexual abuse. Contrary to the argument of the proponents of the proposed legislation, the fact that child erotica is only legal in cartoon form clearly suggests that society is so opposed to any indication of child abuse that it prohibits material which depicts real children in a potentially sexual manner. By criminalising mere cartoons, the government risks providing additional justification for the (justifiable) belief that much of the crusade against paedophiles is a matter of prudism or playing on people's fears, rather than an attempt to protect children. The prevalence of this belief is clearly problematic for a government whose policies rely heavily on a veiled politics of fear, using the "think of the children" mantra as an excuse for abuses of state power. By providing additional evidence for the belief, the government also challenges any message of the kind which the NSPCC were referring to, as it characterises pornography laws as an attempt to legislate morality rather than a disapproval of child abuse.

One of the original arguments in favour of the prohibition of cartoon child erotica is the belief that contact offenders could use cartoons to "groom" children (The Register, 2007). While this may be true, the act of grooming a child is already a serious criminal offence in the UK. If someone is prepared to violate laws against grooming, committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence and attempting sexual activity with a child, they are unlikely to be deterred by laws against the possession of virtual child erotica.

Everyone needs a release

One major concern raised by the proposed prohibition of virtual child erotica is that such a prohibition may encourage some paedophiles to use real child pornography. While viewing or possessing child pornography per se is unlikely to encourage production, the purchase of such material may stimulate production, which must surely be of concern to those who have an interest in protecting children. Criminalising the possession of virtual child erotica will obviously criminalise a legitimate and responsible release for paedophiles' sexual urges. If virtual child erotica were criminalised, the only available releases (other than clothed and non-erotic images of children) would be illegal activities, such as the use of illegal photographs or harmful behaviour involving real children, or the new offence of using virtual child erotica. While the sentence for possessing illegal photographs of children is slightly harsher than the recommended sentence for the proposed crime of possessing "prohibited [virtual] images of children", an offender would be outed as a "paedophile" in both cases, with all of the destructive social and financial effects which that entails. It would therefore be unsurprising if anybody who required a release involving some kind of erotic stimuli depicting children chose illegal photographs, as the consequences would not differ significantly from those which would result from viewing cartoons. The greater issue is with the minority of paedophiles who have no concern for the welfare of children or believe that having sex with children is harmless. In the case of people who avoid sexual contact with children solely as a result of the legal consequences — and who desperately require the release which virtual child erotica provides — the consequences of banning virtual child erotica are a major concern.

Conclusion

Children's charities and legislators are clutching at straws and ignoring the plethora of evidence which indicates that child erotica has a socially positive effect on paedophiles. While the motivations of children's charities are presumably financial, one must ask why the government are so insistent on legislation which will have no benefit to the safety of children or any other person.

A more cynical interpretation of the proposed legislation would be that the government is attempting to tighten its grip on the population. By exploiting the natural concern of protecting children as an excuse for monopolising power within the state, power-hungry legislators are able to increase their ability to further their personal political agenda. While such a belief could be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, one must consider the intentions of someone who chooses a political career; a career which does not provide huge financial rewards for people whose necessary social engineering skills could achieve seven-figure salaries in the private sector. Inevitably, politicians will be motivated to influence and control others.

Many politicians find that arguing for "child protection" laws is an easy way of soliciting votes from a public which is misinformed by the media and manipulative "childrens'" charities. Politicians may also find that they can persuade the public to support controversial legislation by claiming that such legislation is "for the children". Furthermore, any elected politician who disagrees with any legislation which is "for the children", however reasonable their grounds, is liable to lose their position at the next election.

The current political system supports politicians who crusade under the guise of protecting children in order to justify policy types which support their own world view or increase their power over those who they govern. The laws which result from such policies threaten the civil rights of everyone, as they may be used to justify further intrusions into the private lives of citizens. The proposed law against the possession of cartoon and drawn child erotica is one such law, and the effects which it may have should be of significant concern to both civil libertarians and people who genuinely care about children."
The Courts

Submission + - Child Porn Viewer Told to Pay $200000 Restitution (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "In a landmark ruling, a man convicted of possessing and distributing child pornography has been forced to pay $200000 to a subject of images which he possessed but did not distribute. The lawyer of a woman who was once depicted in some of the images claimed that "the victim is a victim of sexual exploitation caused by this defendant," despite the fact that the defendant downloaded the images almost ten years after they had been produced. Ernie Allen, of the state-funded advocacy organisation NCMEC, argued that "every time they are downloaded, every time they are distributed, the victim in that image is revictimised"."
Censorship

Submission + - European ISPs Could Be Subject To UK Laws

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "The European Parliament has long demanded an intra-jurisdictional approach to criminal activity on the internet — typically using the protection of children as justification — however the Single European Police State has taken a step closer to (or further from) reality, with the introduction of the Coroners and Justice Bill. The bill — which is currently being discussed by a 'select committee' in the English Parliament — seeks to criminalise both UK and European service providers under UK law if they dare to provide access to any material which is deemed to encourage suicide or display 'pornographic' drawings of children.

"Schedule 10 of the Coroners and Justice Bill (as amended) intends to criminalise any UK service provider which "does an act, in an EEA state other than the United Kingdom, which encourages or assists the suicide or attempted suicide of another person and which is intended to encourage suicide or an attempt at suicide, and does that act in the course of providing information society services". Schedule 11 of the Bill intends to criminalise any UK service provider which "is in possession, in an EEA state other than the United Kingdom, of a prohibited image of a child, and is in possession of it there in the course of providing information society services". An entity is providing an information society service if it operates "any service normally provided for remuneration, at a distance, by means of electronic equipment for the processing (including digital compression) and storage of data, and at the individual request of a recipient of a service". This includes internet service providers, web hosting companies, and search engines which cache data from other websites.

The above clauses may also be applied to a service provider which is registered anywhere in the EEA (European Economic Area), if the institution of criminal proceedings "is necessary for the purposes of the public interest objective, relates to an information society service that prejudices that objective or presents a serious and grave risk of prejudice to that objective, and is proportionate to that objective." In short, the UK authorities will prosecute if they believe that the service provider's provision of certain material is offensive to the British public. A service provider is registered in the UK or an EEA state if it "effectively pursues an economic activity using a fixed establishment in [..] the United Kingdom, or [an] EEA state".

Any service provider (registered either in the UK or another EEA country) which is prosecuted under Schedule 10 of the bill (if enacted as amended) will be charged with an offence under the 1961 Suicide Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. Any service provider which is prosecuted under Schedule 11 will be tried for possessing a prohibited image of a child, a new child sex offence which will be created by this Bill.

A "prohibited image of a child" (as amended) is any visual depiction (excluding photographs or pseudo-photographs) of a (virtual) person who appears to be under the age of 18, where the image was "produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal", is "grossly offensive, or otherwise of an obscene character", and focuses on the genital or anal area, depicts children witnessing sexual activity, or shows children engaging in sexual activity. Such legislation was demanded by childrens' charities and police agencies who claimed that "cartoons of child sexual abuse" could "fuel the inappropriate fantasies of potential abusers", despite evidence which suggests that paedophiles are less likely to act on their urges if they are able to generate sufficient fantasies about children. Furthermore, legislators have ignored research which suggests that most people who abuse children do not have a significant sexual interest in children (and so are more likely to seek pornographic images of adults, not child sex cartoons).

The Bill apparently attempts to exempt ISPs who act as "mere conduits", but the relevant clause is written in such a way that ISPs which employ traffic shaping techniques are not considered "mere conduits". There is also an exception for caching, but this does not include the reduction of images to thumbnails. Web hosts may be subject to prosecution if they refuse to remove offending material which they have been notified of, even if they are not made aware that possessing or providing access to such material constitutes a criminal offence in a foreign (UK) jurisdiction. If enacted as presently amended, this Bill could theoretically lead to the operators of non-UK ISPs and web hosts being prosecuted under UK law for a ridiculous child sex offence or complicity in an act of suicide, simply because the ISP or host provides access to material which is illegal in the UK."
Security

Submission + - UK Claims Link Between Child Porn and Terrorism (timesonline.co.uk) 3

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "The Times reports claims made by government officials and security services, regarding an alleged correlation between the use of indecent images and terrorist activity. According to the article, "secret coded messages are being embedded into child pornographic images, and paedophile websites are being exploited as a secure way of passing information between terrorists" and "it is not clear whether the terrorists were more interested in the material for personal gratification or were drawn to child porn networks as a secure means of sending messages." The correlation is likely to be false; under UK law, nude photographs of all minors — including those who are over the age of consent — are illegal, so it's not surprising that many people (including terrorists) are found to have illegal material when their computers are searched. In reality, this story is probably just a poor attempt to justify the government's proposed big brother database."
Security

Submission + - UK Police Arrest Controversial Critics (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: British Police have arrested two forensics experts for "conspiracy to possess indecent images of children", days before they were due to testify during a group action which aimed to expose serious Police failures in the handling of the controversial Operation Ore. According to The Register, the data seized during the recent raid included a clone of a hard drive which had been copied with permission from the Police, as well as other data which was relevant to the group action but is not believed to contain indecent images. One must ask questions about the motives behind the arrests.
Censorship

Submission + - UK Photographer Charged For Fairy Photos (yorkshirepost.co.uk)

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "A man in the United Kingdom has been convicted of taking indecent photographs of children after photographing underage girls dressed as fairies. The photographs were taken with the permission of both the children and the parents — the latter also being present at the photoshoot — however the images depicted the girls without their breasts covered, meaning that they fell under the definition of the lowest level of child pornography; "images depicting erotic posing [or nudity] with no sexual activity". The sentencing judge was unhappy about the conviction, stating "what is clear is that [the photographer] had no base motive, no sexual motive and there was not any question of deriving sexual gratification from what [he was] doing", and so handed out a community sentence rather than the recommended two years' custody. Could it be the case that laws against indecency are designed to prosecute deviants and not to protect the public?"
Censorship

Submission + - UK to Criminalise Virtual Child Pornography 1

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "The English Ministry of Justice has today announced that it will criminalise "all images of child sexual abuse, including drawings and computer-generated images". A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice justified the decision by claiming that "paedophiles could be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons", however it is already illegal to do this or to possess any image derived from an indecent photograph of a child, under Section 69 of the 2008 Criminal Justice and Immigration Act. It is presently illegal to distribute any obscene publication, so the proposed new law will actually target only the possession of virtual child pornography for which no real child has ever been abused."
The Internet

Submission + - Internet "creates paedophiles"

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "In the latest sensationalist article about paedophiles on the internet, the director of a Spanish vigilante organisation has claimed that the internet "creates paedophiles". While conflating paedophilia with child sexual abuse, the "expert" quoted in the article incorrectly states that "studies show that some paedophiles feel attracted to children from an early age, but the majority of them develop the tendency later on"; he then claims that "the internet can become a catalyst for people belonging to the latter group"."
Privacy

Submission + - Bill Seeks Criminalisation of "Extreme" Ad

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "During the Queen's speech, it was today announced that the "Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill" intends to criminalise the mere possession of "extreme" or "violent" adult pornography. Many flawed and deceitful arguments (often used to justify the criminalisation of the possession of child porn) have been used, including claims that the possessor will somehow "harm" the victim every time the image is viewed, and the unproven belief that the possessor will be "corrupted" by the images and will then act out his fantasies. The "evidence" (pdf) used to justify this aim of the bill came from a study solicited by the Ministry of Justice, conducted by feminist activists. Will the British government ever cease to use pseudo-science in order to invade the private lives of its citizens?"
Censorship

Submission + - EU Demands Europe-wide Censorship of Underage Porn 2

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "Radio Netherlands is reporting that the EU is planning to force all of its members to criminalise the viewing of child pornography on the internet. While many people will consider this to be a necessary measure to protect the children, it fails to consider the fact that the downloading of material — without payment — does not encourage those who produce such material, rather it simply offends the public. The production of child pornography is currently the only crime which can't be observed; even watching a video of a murder is legal, yet the EU are demanding even stricter forms of censorship of sexual material. Is such censorship justified, or is it a symptom of a moral panic?"
Google

Submission + - Google Acquires Doubleclick

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "The Register is reporting that Google has finally acquired Doubleclick, the "leading computer-tracking cookie provider" for $3.1bn. This follows failed attempts from companies such as Microsoft, who attempted to buy the company for $2bn

This latest purchase — involving one of the most offensive advertising companies on the World Wide Web — does little to enhance Google's "Do No Evil" motto."
Censorship

Submission + - Nude Child Sculptures to Become Illegal in UK

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "The British government has announced that it will soon be illegal to possess nude child art, which includes drawings, sculptures and computer generated images depicting nude children. While it is difficult to deny that some people will support this new law, should we really believe that this is about protecting children, or is it simply another example of popularist politics from a government official who desperately needs to improve his public image?"

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