Saturday, April 18, 2015

Tough Times in the UK

(Picture courtesy of Dreams of Spanking.)

A while ago, Ludwig wrote this rant about a change of the UK law which now has lots of restrictions concerning what kind of content UK based porn producers are allowed to sell online. Forbidden are, amongst many other things, depictions of bondage and gags, age play, as well as spanking and caning which goes beyond "transient and trifling" (whatever that means).

In January, Pandora Blake and Nimue Allen started a campaign to raise money for Backlash in order to fight the new law and to build a legal defence fund, should any UK porn producer be targetted. As Backlash explains on their site: "Backlash is an umbrella organisation providing academic, legal, and campaigning resources defending freedom of sexual expression. We support the rights of adults to participate in all consensual sexual activities and to watch, read and create any fictional interpretation of such in any media."
 

(Picture courtesy of Restrained Elegance.)

To raise money, other producers joined in and many models offered to take hard cane strokes for every £10 raised. £3.836 were raised and as a result, you can now watch a whole bunch of free severe caning clips online. You can watch Nimue's video here, Amelia Jane Rutherford's canings here and here and Alex Reynolds' caning here. And there is a whole bunch of free videos on Pandora's site Dreams Of Spanking.

Unfortunately it seems that the impending threat has become very real all too fast. As she explained in this post, Pandora has already received a letter from the ATVOD in February. No one can say how this story will end, but needless to say that Pandora fears to lose the business she has put so much passion, hard work and of course also money into.


(Picture courtesy of Nimues World.)

Of course a lot could be said about the stupidity of the new law and about what it tells us about our society and its view on sexuality and porn. But I think Ludwig already covered that part very well in his post. I have to admit that the cultural and social implications have ceased to shock me. What concerns me is that a lovely friend is having a very tough time now which has already affected her health.

If you like the free videos, you can support the producers by joining their sites. As Pandora wrote in her post: "We are living in interesting times. If you haven't yet joined the site, do it now, while you still can - time is running out, and legal fees are expensive." Of course you can also still make a donation to Backlash if you like.

 
(Picture courtesy of Northern Spanking.)

Maybe the lawyers will be able to prove that the law doesn't make any sense. Maybe Pandora can keep her business after all and continue to make videos which I and many others very much enjoy. For now, I just wish her to get well soon because health is much more important than everything else!

2 comments:

Simon said...

I gave some money to the backlash campaign, not very much unfortunately, and hope that the campaign is successful. Sadly I do not believe that either a judicial challenge or a political campaign are going to change the law although of course we should try. During an election campaign no politician is going to embrace a campaign which would be portrayed by the majority of the press as support for pornography and perverts.

Kaelah said...

@ Simon:
Like you I don't have much faith in campaigns for personal freedom, especially when it comes to kink and pornography. But who knows? The regulations aren't really clear (what, for instance, does beyond transient and trifling mean?), so maybe it is possible to fight the law after all. Hope dies last!