It's an interesting point.
In the UK illegal pornography is generally defined in terms of:
Possession and distribution
and
Extreme content or able to corrupt the audience
The descriptors are vague and really address a pre-internet era reality.
Extreme pornography in relation to harm to others is very specific though. Judgement is made as to the degree of harm the physical body is perceived to receive because of the acts depicted. This can range from possession of fisting porn (recently an attempted prosecution based on this was thrown out of a UK court) to rape and violence where blood and actual bodily harm can be seen.
I've wondered if technically speaking possession of gay rape genre videos downloaded from the internet would be illegal in the UK. Certainly in the UK there is concern about the rape porn websites that exist to cater for those who are turned on by that genre. But the driving force is generally concerned about rape against women and not gay fetish as such. Personally i think some of the gay rape enactment vids which pop up on the gay torrent sites have nothing to do with the extreme s&m fetish videos and are specifically rape focused in nature judging by the screen caps.
Enactment (consensual) vs actual (non consensual) is a key to the legality and it's tricky ground at least in the UK. However cases have been tried in the UK where the enactments were consensual but the level of injury to the body was deemed illegal. ( A famous s&m trial some years back.) The recent case of a bestiality trial where the animal in question was proved to be a person in costume overturned the attempt to convict on the basis of possession of bestial pornography. So the consensual issue is important and needs to be proven. Therefore consensual enactment of rape could be legal if the level of harm to the physical body is negligible and legal notices indicating consensual can be verified.
Where in the UK the prosecution fails to secure a successful trial on the basis of possession, distribution, depiction of extreme content or non consensual activity, they can turn to the issue of 'liable to corrupt the audience'. Of course as soon as one tries to interpret the issue of 'liable to corrupt' things become ambiguous and there is a lot of misunderstanding about what at the fringe end of pornography is illegal because of the loose terms which define the law in the UK .
For example both consensual rape enactment and scat porn are flagged up as both illegal and legal in the UK. On the one hand they are consensual (where known to be provable) and do not depict actual bodily harm but on the other both can appear extreme by definition and could corrupt if possession is within the vicinity of children for example in a family home or the defendant appears to have an unnecessarily unhealthy interest in the fetish indicated by large collections of material and extensive social networks orientated around the fetish. There are mixed indications regarding the number of prosecutions in the UK with some sources indicating success in certain cases whilst other sources site these as entirely legal. It appears that each case does to a a degree get considered within it's own context and is subject to the views of the judge or jury overseeing the interpretation and application of the law upon it's own situation.
So one suspects the mods here must make decisions about content in the same way, on a case by case basis. I've been curious as to which country's laws the mods apply taking that no international agreement exists for regulation of some of the extreme porn available such as rape porn - but famously child pornography has generally been the notable exception to the otherwise lack of consistency in international law.
twzz
