LONDON — A new U.K. law that criminalizes possession of “extreme” pornography will take effect January 26th, 2009. Under Sections 62-67 of the Criminal Justice Act 2008, anyone caught with sexually explicit material that depicts violence, activity likely to result in bodily harm or sex with corpses or animals faces up to three years in prison.The law was enacted in May, after 39-year-old Graham Coutts blamed kidnapping, raping and murdering 31-year-old Jane Longhurst on an addiction to violent porn he viewed on the internet. Picking an activation date has been problematic for the Ministry of Justice because critics claim the law contains too much vagueness that could lead to prosecution of innocent people who engage in consensual sexual fetish play.

Although the law states a “reasonable person” must be both grossly offended by the “extreme” imagery and convinced the action depicted could be real, questions remained about enforcement even after the Ministry of Justice released guidelines on November 26th. Even the law’s supporters have voiced concern that no one will know how far-ranging the implications are until several cases have been prosecuted in the courts.

What is clear now is that even computer-generated imagery can run afoul of the law, but people need only delete computer files to prove they no longer possess prohibited material.

The second point comes with a caveat: Tech-savvy folks who are able to recover deleted files may not be able to use “I deleted it” as a defense.

In fact, there are a number of apparent contradictions in the regulations. One of the most notable is that possession of material that has passed review by the British Board of Film Classification will be considered safe … unless the possessor extracts frames or clips from the film that, considered on their own, would violate the law. According to the BBFC, “transitory” scenes occasionally may not keep a film from classification, but the legality of a film shouldn’t rest solely on the board’s shoulders because juries in different parts of the country frequently disagree about what constitutes obscenity, let alone extremity.

Besides, authorities haven’t always agreed with the BBFC’s decisions. In 1997, police threatened to raid the board — which is independent of the government — after avant-garde filmmaker Nigel Wingrove escaped prosecution because the film accused of obscenity had passed BBFC screening.

Cooler heads prevailed on the argument that raiding the BBFC would prove disastrous for the U.K.’s film industry, and the raid never happened. However, critics claim a similar scenario is likely to develop — even potentially involving mainstream films — under the new law, which they castigate as overtly kowtowing to moralists.

Mainstream scenes that have been pointed out as potentially problematic occur in A Clockwork Orange, Matador, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blue Velvet and Saw.