Adopting exactly the same note of outraged propriety and offended rectitude that made the original ‘consultation’ document such an objectionable read, Croaker intoned: ‘The vast majority of people find these forms of violent and extreme pornography deeply abhorrent. This sort of material is not just offensive, it contains images of sexual acts and sexual violence that are already illegal to publish or distribute in the UK.

Such material has no place in our society but the advent of the Internet has meant that this material is more easily available and means existing controls are being by-passed - we must move to tackle this. By banning the possession of such material the Government is sending out a strong message - that it is totally unacceptable and those who access it will be held to account’.

Meanwhile the response itself shows that the Home Office has refused to take on board any of the most serious objections raised to the original proposals – in particular that they are dangerously vague and catch-all, would criminalise the possession of vast swathes of images of consensual BDSM activity, as well as of feature films which are perfectly legal in the US and the rest of Europe, would represent a completely unacceptable extension of police powers to enter and search people’s homes, and are very probably contrary to Britain’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

In brief, the Home Office intends to outlaw the possession of material which is pornographic (defined as ‘material that has been solely or primarily produced for the purpose of sexual arousal’) but which also contains one or more of the following: ‘intercourse or oral sex with an animal’, ‘sexual interference with a human corpse’ and ‘images of acts that appear to be life threatening or are likely to result in serious, disabling injury’. It is this last category in particular which makes the scope of the new measure worryingly wide and vague.

Crucially, the words ‘appear to be’ quite explicitly bring within the remit of the proposed legislation both fictional depictions of violence as well as images of what are in fact perfectly consensual acts of BDSM. As the response itself makes abundantly clear, the legislation is intended to criminalise the possession of images both of ‘actual scenes’ and of ‘depictions which appear to be real acts’, adding that: ‘By actual scenes or depictions which appear to be real acts, we intend to catch material which either is genuinely violent or conveys a realistic impression of fear, violence and harm’.

At this point, anybody who possesses not simply BDSM images but any film which has not been certificated by the BBFC and which contains images of both violence and explicit sex should seriously start to worry about their impending criminalisation. And we’re not talking minor offences here: ‘On penalties, as set out in the consultation, we propose a maximum penalty of three years’ imprisonment for possession of material depicting serious violence and a lesser maximum penalty for possession of material in the other categories to reflect the seriousness of the offences shown or depicted in the material. It would also be the intention to raise the maximum penalty for offences of publication, distribution and possession for gain committed under the 1959 and 1964 Obscene Publications Acts to five years’ imprisonment’.

The beauty of this proposed measure for the government, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service is that it enables them to circumvent the Obscene Publications Act, whose ‘deprave and corrupt’ definition of obscenity has proved such a stumbling block for the censorious in the past. Just as the Video Recordings Act by-passed the OPA by creating a new offence of distributing (which the police and CPS have routinely interpreted as including swapping with a friend or fellow fan) a video not classified by the BBFC, so this new measure will create a new offence of mere possession of certain kinds of images, with none of the defences available under the OPA.

Furthermore, by listing specific kinds of images whose possession will be illegal, the new measure takes a step closer to the so called ‘laundry list’ approach to censorship practised by Customs and Excise in their seizure of material which they deem indecent or obscene. Those who regard the OPA as too liberal have long campaigned for similar powers to be made available to the police, either under a reformed OPA that includes a catalogue of forbidden images, or under a law such as the one currently proposed.

The Home Office received a total of 397 responses to the ‘consultation’. The majority of individuals who responded (many, but by no means all, of whom came from the BDSM community) opposed the proposals, the majority of organisations supported it (whilst mostly complaining that they went nothing like far enough).

The organisations consisted mainly of police forces, moral entrepreneurs, and groups representing women, children and religious interests. This, however, is not the impression that one would have gleaned from Croaker’s performance on Radio 4 on the day the proposal was announced. To quote him verbatim: ‘Most people that, er, responded to the consultation, and organisations that responded to the consultation, found it unacceptable, found that it was a standard of the government needing to do something’.

That a clear and substantial numerical majority opposed the proposals, however, cut no ice with the Home Office, who noted in their response that: ‘The outcome of the consultation … has not been based on a numerical assessment of those in favour, or those opposed, to the proposal but on a detailed analysis of the responses which have been submitted’. Similarly, a letter of complaint about the proposal elicited the response from the Criminal Law Policy Unit at the Home Office that: ‘We did not simply take account of the number of respondents who were in favour of, or opposed, the proposal but also considered the weight of the arguments advanced’.

In this case, one would expect the arguments advanced by the supporters of the proposal to be far more convincing in every respect than those of its opponents. However, to say that exactly the reverse is the case doesn’t even begin to do justice to the yawning intellectual and – yes – moral, gap between the two sides.

As co-chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom I’ve been involved in responding to many consultations on media matters and must have read literally hundreds of responses to such consultations. In all this time I have never encountered better-informed responses from ordinary members of the public than those written by opponents of this measure. In glaring contrast, the responses from its supporters are, for the most part, apocalyptic (individuals), dogmatic and intellectually dubious (women’s groups), and downright authoritarian (the police).

The Home Office response notes that many of the measure’s opponents ‘made similar arguments, some citing or using wording from the “Backlash” campaign’, but its authors are apparently too stupid to have noticed, or more likely are too intellectually dishonest to want to note, the remarkable similarities between the responses of many of the measure’s supporters, which have all the hallmarks of at least one lobby, and probably more.

The women’s groups that responded positively to the consultation were Justice for Women, Wearside Women in Need, the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University, Object, and the Lilith Project, which responded on behalf of the Women’s National Commission. This last is actually the government’s independent advisory body on women’s issues. It has a Violence Against Women working group, which in turn has a Sexual Violence sub-group, whose chair, Professor Liz Kelly, endorsed the Lilith response; she also authored that of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit.

The overall picture that emerges from these responses is not one with which all feminists, let alone all women, would agree – as the response from Feminists Against Censorship clearly indicates. For the latter, ‘pornography is about sexual fantasy, it is not about real life’ and they argue that: ‘There is no evidence that any type of pornography causes harm’.

The idea that the legislation would protect women who participate in the making of this kind of material is dismissed as ‘patronising’, and FAC conclude that locking someone up for possessing an image ‘does nothing to help the victims of real crime’ and is a ‘total waste of precious resources’.

According to Justice for Women, ‘violent pornography is commonplace’. The groups all agree, furthermore, that the problem is not just ‘extreme’ pornography but all pornography, which enjoys a ‘virtual ubiquity’ (Child and Abuse Studies Unit) and imbues ‘our whole society’ (Justice for Women). Such a view clearly rests on a conception of pornography which is as broad as it is controversial. Thus Justice for Women quotes as gospel Dworkin’s famous remark that: ‘The question is not: Does pornography cause violence against women? Pornography is violence against women, violence which pervades and distorts every aspect of our culture’.

Similarly the Lilith Project states that: ‘The increasing use of pornographic images (sexually explicit images featuring women’s bodies) in advertising, magazines, music videos etc. causes psychological harm to women by normalising the sexual use of women’s bodies; suggesting that women enjoy the acts being shown in pornographic material and therefore enjoy sexual violation; by increasing actual sexual violence towards women and by creating and reinforcing negative attitudes towards women’. In their view, pornography creates a climate hostile to women ‘by reinforcing social messages of women as sexualised objects and playthings.

As such, pornography constitutes a type of hate speech in which explicitly anti-women messages are transmitted, and should not be defensible under freedom of speech’. Meanwhile the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit argue that: ‘All heterosexual pornography constructs women’s resistance as something men must overcome and ignore when it conflicts with their wishes and desires’. For Object, meanwhile, pornography is harmful in more general ways because ‘the effects of misogynistic pornographic representations create problems regarding the welfare of women’s everyday lives, for example in employment discrimination and economic exploitation’.

The groups are divided on the question of proof to back up such questionable and simplistic assertions, which seem to suggest that each and every form of exploitation and discrimination from which women do indeed suffer in contemporary society can be blamed simply and solely on pornography. Thus Justice for Women argue that: ‘It does not matter that research cannot prove conclusively that pornography has negative effects’. On the other hand, Object feels that the evidence of harm done by violent pornography is ‘overwhelming’ and ‘extensive’ whilst for the Lilith Project ‘a significant body of research exists which demonstrates the links between the proliferation of pornography and sexual violence towards women’.

Most of the research cited by the women’s groups, and by a suspiciously large number of other respondents supporting the Home Office proposals, turns out to be the usual litany of Zillman, Bryant, Malamuth, Donnerstein and other US psychologists, whose work is routinely produced like a rabbit out of a hat by those wishing to blame the media for all society’s ills. The problem is, however, that such work is based on both an experimental method and a model of human behaviour that many psychologists – not to mention social scientists – would comprehensively reject.

As the psychologists Guy Cumberbatch and Dennis Howitt put it in their book A Measure of Uncertainty, one has to ask ‘whether it is possible to carry out such studies as if they take place in a time-warped, amoral, culture-free test tube’, and they conclude that: ‘There is not one jot of evidence which links this type of research finding with real-life sexual violence. Conjecture and surmise form the basis of any bridges’.

Largely on the basis of such research, however, the women’s groups propose legal measures that go far beyond the criminalisation of the ‘extreme pornographic material’ that so concerns the Home Office. Wearside Women in Need, for instance, wish to see ‘incitement to gender hatred’ added to the categories of illegal material, including the use of the word ‘bitch’, but the most detailed list of proscriptions comes from the Lilith Project, whose response, it needs to be stressed, was endorsed by a member of the government’s own independent advisory body on women’s issues. Thus Lilith ‘would like to see the UK government acting to protect women by defining all pornography as harmful to women and thus restricting all content which depicts women in sexually degrading imagery. The violation to women produced by pornography is not limited to material that shows violent acts, as this consultation paper suggests is the case’. Lilith’s very considerable ‘laundry list’ thus includes:

- Any material which has scenes of sexual violence, not just those which are deemed to be showing “serious” sexual violence.
- Any material which shows women’s bodies being abused in any way.
- Any material which is hostile to women by showing them in passive roles in sexual activity or being dominated.
- Any material which features naked women for the sole purpose of sexual gratification’.

Similarly, Object urges the ‘reconsideration of the term “obscene” as defined in the OPA (1959) as “the ability to deprave and corrupt”. The moral-based term “obscenity” should be replaced by the harm-based term pornography defined by the harm done to women. We suggest specific sex-discrimination legislation against pornography (both violent and non-violent, but subordinating, material) which defines pornography concretely, specifically and objectively by the harm which it does to women’.

With all their rhetorical flourishes about ‘drawing lines in the sand’ and ‘sending out strong messages’, these submissions make it abundantly clear that what their authors would like to see is not simply the criminalisation of the possession of certain kinds of pornography but a wholesale purging of modern culture of images which they find objectionable.

To which some might respond: ‘Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?’ But it’s when one also finds similarly intolerant and censorious attitudes being expressed by the eighteen police forces which responded to the consultation, plus the Police Federation and the British Association of Women in Policing, that one really starts to worry.

Many of the police responses are marked by bitter resentment that those arrested and charged under the OPA have dared to make use of the defences available under it; demands for more resources so that the proposed new measure can be enforced effectively; requests for the powers of arrest to be made available for the proposed new offences (thus making it far easier to secure evidence at the earliest possible opportunity); and complaints that the proposed offences are too narrow and the proposed sentences too short.

It’s also extremely hard to avoid the conclusion that many of the respondents regard those whom they are policing as, to coin a constabulary phrase, ‘swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making’. Britain’s gaols may be groaning at the seams, its police may complain that they are over-worked and under-resourced, but any vestigial hope that the proposed measure might be enforced selectively and sensibly will be detonated by even a brief glance at these responses, some of whose authors seem to be in the grip of a frighteningly self-righteous and vengeful fury.

The best example of this sort of attitude comes not from the responses themselves but from an article by Detective Inspector Ian Winton of the Nottinghamshire police in the Nottingham Post, 31 August, in which he threatens: ‘We will not hesitate in using this new legislation. Those convicted of this new offence will have to sign the sex offenders' register which will affect not just their relationship with friends and family but also their careers.

It will make many users of extreme pornography think again’. Meanwhile, in his actual response, Winton argues that any change in the law should be accompanied by a widespread publicity campaign that will ‘inhibit people from “surfing” the Internet for pornography and accessing it’.

If terrorising people into modifying their viewing habits just because they might be breaking a vague and catch-all law smacks of thought crime, then the anonymous Detective Inspector from the Public Protection Unit of Avon and Somerset Constabulary, sounds suspiciously like Big Brother in his pronouncement that: ‘The introduction of such legislation would give a clear message as to what is acceptable. There has been a significant drift from protective standards over the years and the Internet has accelerated this process’.

Meanwhile Detective Inspector Colin Gibson of the Economic Crime Unit, Durham Constabulary expresses the view that: ‘Society has a right and expectation to be protected from images such as those discussed’. However, the first remark begs the question: acceptable to whom? While the second leads one to ask: which particular section(s) of society? It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the ‘society’ being invoked here is simply a convenient euphemism for ‘established opinion’.

Detective Inspector Gibson is also among the many arguing that the proposed measures do not go far enough. In his view: ‘Whilst it is accepted that it is the intention to restrict any new offence to pornographic material many would argue that this is a conservative list and leaves room for development. Not all abhorrent images are produced for sexual gratification. Some are quite clearly just obscene and offensive and without a sexual connutation [sic] yet simple possession would still fall outside of current and proposed legislation’.

His view is shared by Detective Chief Inspector Rob Donagy of Cleveland Police, who notes that: ‘Violent scenes without a sexual nature are specifically excluded from these proposals. Whilst acknowledging the reason for this, the “Abhorrent to the Public” test would surely be met with these images. I consider that the basis for the current proposals (i.e. protection of vulnerable people involved and access to such material) would equally apply to extreme violent scenes without a sexual nature (e.g. snuff movies etc.)’.

Detective Sergeant Keith Wharton of the West Midlands Police wants ‘the eating of faeces or urine’ added to the list, while Detective Inspector Winton states that: ‘In our opinion acts of coprophilia (excrement, urination) within pornograph [sic] are examples of the total degradation of the person subject of such acts. It is our view that such acts are enjoyed by sadists. Likewise acts of belonephilia (needles fetish), agonophilia (pseudo rape), and other forms of extreme violence are also enjoyed by sadist [sic] and those persons with sadistic tendencies. Such tendencies would skew the mindset of the viewer of such material to believe that this is the norm. As such we feel it should not be tolerated’.

John Francis, general secretary of the Police Federation of England and Wales, goes even further, arguing that: ‘The circumstances in which the material is found is not, at the present time, considered when sentencing takes place, as only the image charged can be so considered. This applies when considering the sexual nature of an image. For example, so called “snuff movies” whereby persons are actually killed on screen are currently not considered for a sexual motive.

The circumstances in which the images are found should be considered. There is evidence of these movies being found with a great deal of pornography, which in itself is not illegal to possess. This also applies to mutilation images, scenes of crime, images of murder victims, beheadings, etc. The question to be asked is why anyone would want these images in the first place. It is the circumstances in which they are found that implies a sexual motive. However, as legislation stands at present no account can be taken of them, as it is not illegal to possess these images’.

Yes: it is being suggested in all seriousness that if you possess images of death and violence, and you also possess pornographic images, then you possess the former for reasons of sexual gratification. Moreover, the conflation in this and other responses of relatively brief images of ‘real live death’ (which are indeed easy to find on the internet, but whose circulation no amount of oppressive behaviour by the British police will reduce by one iota) with ‘snuff movies’ (entirely mythical feature films in which participants are allegedly killed purely for the delectation of the cinema spectator), demonstrates all too clearly that the police simply cannot be trusted to act reasonably in matters such as this.

As I demonstrated in my essay ‘Snuffed Out: Nightmares in a Trading Standards Officer’s Brain’ in the collection Unruly Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics, the police have consistently invoked the myth of the ‘snuff movie’ to justify their persecution of horror fans who have the temerity to swap movies that have not been certificated by the BBFC. The fact that such people are about to be handed yet another excuse to batter down people’s doors in dawn raids, seize their computers, videos, DVDs, books and magazines, ensure that their names are plastered across the local and, in the cases of the famous, national media, beggars belief.

Perhaps one can take a crumb of comfort from the following eminently sane and reasonable response. Completely at odds with the above, it states that it is ‘not sure the case for strengthening the law has been made’ and that: ‘There appears not to be any definite research that links the material in question to violent offences’. It also notes, quite correctly, that there are already laws in place ‘for being involved in the majority of the offences’ and that criminalising the possession of realistic depictions ‘would mean that it would not be an offence to take part in the making of the film but would be an offence to possess it’.

The response concludes that: ‘We are getting close to individual morals here. Also, the questions appear to have a pejorative sense to them’. And what is this beacon of calm in such an apparently over-heated world? No less than the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales.

Turning finally to the individuals who supported the measure, we find clear evidence of a lobby in the repeated complaints that the BBFC is far too liberal when it classifies R18 videos (which can be sold only in licensed sex shops) and that Internet Service Providers should be prosecuted for carrying obscene material (the correspondents seem to be blithely unaware of the extensive censorship carried out by the Internet Watch Foundation).

Most appear to believe that we are inhabiting a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and their overall tone is perfectly encapsulated by the following response from a former military man: ‘Rather than only heed the views of vested interests, political pawns and brain washed psuedo [sic] intellectual permissives; may we urge you to heed the concerns of parents, teachers and lecturers, trainers, priests and ministers of all Faiths, as well as what might be described as the “sergeants of society”?’

When we come to the press, the situation is rather more complicated than might have been expected. For example, on 31 August the liberal Guardian gave space to David Wilson, Professor of Criminology at the University of Central England, Birmingham, to make the eminently sensible point that: ‘As if such a law - at the click of a mouse - will end the demand that has created this electronic supply. All that this does, as with Asbos, is create a semblance that something is being done to counter a real issue, without actually tackling the social, economic and cultural circumstances that render women and children powerless and make them pornographic fodder’.

In Wilson’s view, the solutions to violent and abusive pornography will come only ‘when we deal with those issues which create the demand for abusive and violent images of women and children rather than focusing on how this demand is supplied’. Meanwhile in its sister paper, the Observer, on 3 September, Carol Sarler complained that the Home Office was ‘once more unable to pass by an opportunity for vote-grabbing legislation’ in pressing on with a measure ‘flying in the face of all useful reason’.

Moreover, she continued, the proposed law ‘is not only unworkable, but is fundamentally intrusive, putting government where we least want it - in our bedrooms’. On the other hand, however, on 2 September the Guardian, under the heading ‘Jane’s legacy’, ran by far the longest interview with Liz Longurst, as well as dwelling in more detail than other papers on the ‘grotesque and appalling horror’ of her daughter’s death.

More detail, certainly, than the Mail’s news report on 31 August, sympathetic to Liz Longhurst though it was. But on 1 September, the paper also ran a remarkable comment piece by Tom Utley which asked: ‘Do we really need yet another new law, creating yet another new imprisonable criminal offence, at a time when the Government is setting thousands of violent men free to clear space in our prisons - men who certainly do pose an immediate physical threat to us all? Aren't the police far enough stretched as it is, without giving them yet another excuse to sit in their offices, watching hundreds of hours of pornography, instead of getting out on to the beat where they might protect the public?’

While this does sit fairly easily with the Mail’s intense dislike of what it sees as the New Labour ‘nanny state’, it’s hard not to read it as a condemnation of a more general tendency towards knee-jerk legislation such as the notorious Dangerous Dogs Act: ‘Vernon Coaker knows that countless millions of us will heartily agree with him when he says he finds violent and extreme pornography “deeply abhorrent”. He knows that a great many will therefore approve when they see the headlines proclaiming: “Government cracks down on Internet filth”.

So it is that, long after the headlines are forgotten, we will be saddled with yet another badly drafted law, to add to the 3,000-plus new criminal offences already created under Labour. It will be yet another law that nobody will be able to enforce properly, because we haven't enough room in our prisons. And yet another law that will do no obvious good, while giving the police yet another excuse to avoid doing their proper jobs’. (The staunchly law-and-order Mail’s increasing disenchantment with the British police is one of the most significant, and least remarked upon, phenomena of recent times).

Even more remarkable, however, was an article in the Mail’s Irish edition by Mary Ellen Synon on 11 September entitled ‘Laws on porn won’t combat sexual violence’. This thoroughly trounced the idea that sexual violence began with the modern media by citing numerous examples of such violence in pre-modern societies before going on roundly to condemn the Something Must Be Done tendency: ‘They will try to control the web (impossible). They will give police intrusive powers to examine the computers of innocent adults (outrageous).

They will manage a few prosecutions of men who have watched videos of consenting adults engaged in Black & Decker sexual acts (a waste of police time). And they will not stop sexual violence, not that way. Porn doesn't make perverts. Perverts go looking for porn’. Synon concluded that what is needed is for Britain to ‘embrace a philosophy that does not stir in its men an uncontrolled lust for sex with a goat or sodomy with a small boy or intercourse with a corpse or the rape of a helpless and terrified woman’. Much what Professor Wilson was arguing in the Guardian.

It’s also worth noting that when the BBC reported the Home Office response to the consultation on 31 August, they received ‘a response which we hadn’t entirely expected’, according to Craig Oliver, editor of the Ten O’Clock News. Oliver continued: ‘While it was important to give the police and Mrs Longhurst due weight, it was also important to use our position post-watershed to show as much as we could - within the bounds of taste and decency - and raise the questions: can watching this material really trigger murder? If it can't, should we really ban the stuff that is clearly faked and criminalise those who view it?’

Undoubtedly some of these responses came – perfectly properly – from the BDSM community, but what this and the Mail pieces also suggest is that pornography is beginning to lose its dirty raincoat image and that an increasing number of people are unashamed to admit that they use it. Reliable statistics on the consumption of pornography are still hard to come by, but the Independent on Sunday, 28 May 2006, reported that research conducted by Nielsen NetRatings revealed that 9 million men – almost 40% of the male population – visited pornographic websites last year compared with an estimated 2m in 2000.

Women were among the fastest-growing users of net porn, with a 30% rise from 1 million to 1.5 million in the past 12 months. Half of all couples watch pornography on the Internet together. Meanwhile, a global survey by Durex in 2003 found that 38% of people in the UK used handcuffs or other forms of bondage as a sexual stimulant (the highest percentage in the world), and that 42% had used pornographic materials of one kind or another. Informed Consent (the leading BDSM website) has over 92,000 members and receives around 3,000 visits in a 24-hour period, some of which are from what it describes as ‘Mr and Mrs Acacia Avenue’ types.

These are not part of the overt BDSM scene, but might well visit their local Ann Summers to buy BDSM equipment, or purchase it via an online supplier such as the widely advertised Blissbox. They might also watch a pornographic channel owned by newspaper proprietor Richard Desmond via a Sky box provided by media magnate Rupert Murdoch. Indeed, they might well read the Daily Mail. Porn is becoming mainstream, and the muted and mixed press response to the Home Office proposal may perhaps be an indication that newspaper owners and editors have realised that it doesn’t actually make commercial sense to attack their (dwindling) readers’ tastes, let alone sound off against their own business interests.

No responsible person would defend the production or distribution of images of genuinely non-consensual sexual activity. That some people find it sexually pleasurable to watch such images says something deeply disturbing about the construction of sexuality in our society. However, criminalising the possession of such images will do absolutely nothing to stop their production – even if the Internet was banned in its entirety in the UK this would represent but the tiniest blip in the global distribution of pornography online.

But the measure being proposed here is not only pointless and unnecessary (as the Police Superintendents’ Association pointed out), it will criminalise the possession of a far wider range of images than the Home Office says it intends. And, worst of all, every time somebody orders a film which has not been certificated by the BBFC and which contains images of explicit sex and violence, they are going to wonder if the arrival of the film will be closely followed by the arrival of the police to arrest them.

Furthermore, as the responses examined above make abundantly clear, those who support this measure believe that it goes nothing like far enough. If it becomes law, it will serve only to embolden them to demand stricter censorship still. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Better still, don’t let it happen.

More ...

British Law Would Make Possession of Violent Porn Illegal

Guardian Unlimited, 8/30/06 - People who download violent pornography could face three years in jail under new legislation proposed by the government in the wake of the death of Brighton school teacher Jane Longhurst, who was killed by a man addicted to extreme porn.
Ms Longhurst's mother, Liz, has led a three-year campaign, backed by a petition signed by 50,000 people and many MPs, to ban such images.

Today the government unveiled proposals to create a new offence of possessing pornographic images of extreme sexual or life-threatening violence, with a new maximum sentence of three years for possession, or five for distribution of such material.

The new offences - which could be included in a bill in this autumn's Queen's speech - would effectively update the 1959 Obscene Publications Act to take into account the ease with which such images can be distributed over the internet.

The proposed offences, which also cover necrophilia and bestiality, come after a year-long consultation by the government.

The exercise prompted lobbying by organisations in favour of a ban, including 18 local police forces and many religious groups, but also a large number of submissions by individuals concerned about freedom of speech, according to the government's conclusions published today.

The Spanner Trust, which campaigns for the rights of consensual sado-masochists, was also opposed to any new measures.

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker, announcing the measures, said: "The vast majority of people find these forms of violent and extreme pornography deeply abhorrent.

"This sort of material is not just offensive it contains images of sexual acts and sexual violence that are already illegal to publish or distribute in the UK.

"Such material has no place in our society but the advent of the internet has meant that this material is more easily available and means existing controls are being bypassed - we must move to tackle this.

"By banning the possession of such material the government is sending out a strong message - that it is totally unacceptable and those who access it will be held to account." Clauses will exempt documentary films, news and works of art, largely by defining material as primarily pornographic in purpose.

The definition coming out of the consultation applies strictly to pornographic images which are also "acts that appear to be life threatening or are likely to result in serious, disabling injury".

The 31-year old Ms Longhurst was killed in 2003 by musician Graham Coutts, who the court heard was obsessed with internet sites of women being strangled.

Ms Longhurst had been strangled with a pair of tights and her body kept in storage for several weeks before it was found.

Coutts received a life sentence with a recommendation he serve at least 26 years.

Last month, however, Coutts won his House of Lords appeal against his conviction for the murder.

Five Law Lords agreed that jurors should have been offered the possibility of bringing in a manslaughter verdict.

They sent the matter back to the court of appeal, which last year dismissed Coutts's appeal against conviction, to "invite that court to quash the conviction".

Ms Longhurst's mother, and sister Sue, launched a campaign, which received cross-party support, to create new offences regarding such images.

Mrs Longhurst told the BBC "My daughter Sue and myself are very pleased that after 30 months of intensive campaigning we have persuaded the government to take action against these horrific internet sites, which can have such a corrupting influence and glorify extreme sexual violence."

The new law, when passed, will apply to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Scottish executive is likely to bring in a similar offence.

However, the new legislation is likely to face problems similar to other internet issues if the sites are based abroad.

More About British Porn ...

Britain is the Fastest Growing Market for Internet Porn

Independent, 5/28/06 - Record numbers of men and women are downloading pornography from the internet, making Britain the fastest-growing market in the world for the booming £20bn adult website industry.

In the first definitive portrait of the nation's consumption of pornography, The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that more than nine million men - almost 40 per cent of the male population - used pornographic websites last year, compared with an estimated two million in 2000.

In a major survey for the IoS by Nielsen NetRatings, a world leader in internet analysis, research discloses that women are among the fastest-growing users of pornography on the internet, with a 30 per cent rise from just over one million to 1.4 million in the past 12 months. The figures also show that more than half of all children - some seven million - have encountered pornography on the internet "while looking for something else".

Until now, the extent of the use by Britons of internet pornography had not been accurately measured. But the new figures show that one in four men aged 25 to 49 have visited an adult website in the past month - a total of 2.5 million. The surge in use of web pornography mirrors a huge boom in the number of hard-core sex films available to buy legally in the UK over the past few years. Film censors passed more hard-core sex films last year than 18-rated movies.

The UK porn industry is estimated to be now worth about £1bn, compared with £20bn worldwide. British internet surfers look up the word "porn" more than anyone in the English-speaking world.

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