"Extreme pornography" is a term introduced by the UK Government in Part 5, section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 [1], which will make possession of such images a criminal offence. It refers to pornography (defined as an image which "of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal") which is "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character", and portrays any of the following:
* (a) an act which threatens a person’s life,
* (b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
* (c) an act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse,
* (d) a person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive),
and a reasonable person looking at the image would think that any such person or animal was real.
Sounds delightful, doesn't it. However, I think it raises an interesting moral point.
Should 'extreme pornography' really be illegal? Surely it's better for a necrophiliac or sadist to get their sexual kicks from a staged scene rather than a real-life situation. Like it or not, these people exist, and their repressed urges are often much stronger than an average person's libido. Ever see the documentary with Louis Theroux? It appears to me sites such as 'necrobabes' (search on wiki, NOT on Google) that contain no explicit sexual images and contain photos of only consenting models pretending to be dead come under unfair censorship.
Or alternatively, will such pornography only serve to encourage the individual?