vague and overly broad
Well the United Kingdoms CJIB went into efect this past week. The paranoid are comming out of the woodwork with all sorts of theoritical cases where this law might get used againt someone otherwise totaly iniocent.
Usualy this is through some streching and misinterpetation of ’serious injury’. I wrote about this before and pointed out then that ’serious injury’ does have a spicific meaning. So the idiots sprouting off ‘Why a red mark from an OTK spanking might be considered seriosu injury’ are demonstratabaly wrong.
There is actualy a fairly good pamplet put out by Spanner Tust on the issue. It says in part
- FIRST OFF – DON’T PANIC! Images of bondage, fetish wear, role play, watersports, sexual intercourse and domination/submission are not “extreme”.
and also
- For a start just viewing an image or video on a web site does not constitute “possession”. So you can browse the Internet quite legally.
… but this dosent stop the paranoid from deaming up situations where you accedently stumbled uppon a tickling fetish photo while surfing the web and instantly hit the back button but yet the evil porn squad broke down your door 3 seconds later and hauled you off to jail for the rest of your life. After all, ’serious injury’ is so vague and overly broad that it could apply to tickling fetish pics. And ‘in position of is so vague and overly broad that it could apply to the cache of your web browser.
Vague and overly broad. Vage and overly broad. The whole thing reminds me of that old George Carlin bit where he would ask about theoritical situations in sunday school trying to catch the priest in a ‘vague and overly broad’ definition of some sin.
Your on a boat in the middle of the ocean. A model is with you and its her 18th birthday. You take some nude pics but the only notary public on the ship has sliped into coma. So you cant have the paperwork verified that the modfel was over 18. But you WANTED to. Then the ship crosses the international dateline! The model goes back to being 17. The notary public wakes up out of coma and certifies the modeles age …. would it then be child porn?
There is always going to be SOME kind of theoritical situation where the law might be applied incorectly. This is true regardless of how well the law is writen. The old ‘vague and overly broad’ argument theirfore looses all meaning and just becomes a soundbite sized moral panic on par with ‘wont someone think of the children’.
Supreme court justice Antonin Scalia once said “What renders a statute vague is not the possibility that it will sometimes be difficult to determine whether the incriminating fact it establishes has been proved; but rather the indeterminancy of precisely what that fact is.” If there exists some hypethotical situation where ther law could be misapplied dosent make the law vague and overly broad. Wether or not that hypethotical situation has a snowballs chance in hell of actualy realy happening is what makes it vague and overly broad.
One thing thing more than any other has me convinced that all these hypethotical situations folks are sprouting off where someone could get wrongly acused under the CIJA are only hypethotical and will never happen. Everythign in this new law was already againt the law in the first place under the OPA of 1959. Its just that the OPA baned the creation of snufffilms and the CJIB baned the position of snuff films. Now as far as I know, there hasent been any proscutions under the OPA. And if a 50 years of the OPA dosent result in kink as we know it comming to a screaching halt, I dount the CJIB is going to have any difrent an impact on us kinksters as the OPA did.
More spicificly. Frans van der Hulst is still out walking the streets. He hasent been charged with any crime and isnt due in court under any charges. He was the producer that first made the ‘extreme porn’ that was mentioned in the longhurst trial that lead to the creation of the CJIB. In fact, he still runs several websites making the same kinds of images. If the law againt making ‘extreme porn’ cant be used againt Frans van der Hulst, I highly doubt that the law againt owning ‘extreme porn’ is goign to successfuly be used willy nilly to atack kinksters at random.