UK — While Extreme Associates’ Rob Black waits for a new trial date and Max Hardcore learns to dread mention of the city of Tampa, the entire country of England prepares for a crackdown on so-called “extreme porn” thanks to a new law outlawing the entertainment. Two years in the making, a Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill criminalizing the possession of so-called “violent pornography” received its first reading in Parliament recently and now awaits debate and committee review before being officially enacted into law.

While it has been illegal to publish materials featuring “necrophilia, bestiality and violence that is life threatening or likely to result in serious injury to the anus, breasts, or genitals,” as the Ministry of Justice define those things, it will soon be illegal to possess them within the United Kingdom, as well.

Although those who “accidentally come into contact with the obscene pornography,” work in “the mainstream entertainment industry which works within current obscenity laws” or “sell bondage material legally in the UK,” are assured that they will not run afoul of the law’s up to three years in prison punishment, others will not be so lucky.

Of special concern to lawmakers has been the easy access to such materials that citizens have enjoyed thanks to the internet. The Ministry of Justice insists that the new law will address the issue of such content both off and online, stating that “This Government will always seek to close gaps in the law caused by misuse of new technologies, such as the internet, which allow existing controls to be avoided.”

Covered materials include photographs, realistic pictures, moving images, and any file or data that could be converted into a picture.

Situations that should still be safe are those “Where an image forms an integral part of a narrative constituted by a series of images, and it appears that the series of images as a whole was not produces solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal, the image may, by virtue of being part of that narrative, be found not to be pornographic, even though it might have been found to be pornographic if taken by itself.”