There was a rather worrying article in The Independent today about a new UK law that seeks to ban “extreme pornography”. On reading it my mind immediately jumped to issues such as the Christopher Handley case, and I started wondering whether my own comic collection might put me in line for 3 years in prison.

You can find the text of the actual law here. Thankfully it isn’t quite that bad. To start with, the images in question must be pornographic, which is defined as “must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.” The law also sensibly excludes films that have been passed fit for viewing by the censor. And I’m pleased to see that not knowing you possessed the images is a legitimate defense. No one wants to spend 3 years in jail because their laptop was found to contain porn images in spam attachments that they had wisely not opened.

On the other hand, the law is very vaguely worded, and past experience with such laws suggests that self-appointed guardians of public decency all over the UK will immediately start looking for ways in which they can use the law to make nuisances of themselves. In particular it is worth noting that this law makes it a crime merely to possess an image for your own private use. And I suspect that quite a bit of the risque end of anime would fall under the definition in the law. Christopher Handley would almost certainly be convicted under it, if he lived in the UK. [Update: Or maybe not, thank goodness – see Chaz’s comment below.] I suspect that Games Workshop will be looking very carefully at its product line, just in case.