- sexual threats, humiliation or abuse which do not form part of a clearly consenting role-playing game
The guidelines are non-exhaustive and subject to interpretation. However, adult film producers and academics say the following are likely to fall foul of the regulations:
New legislation is set to ban a large number of sexual acts in pornography. The Digital Economy Bill currently being considered in Parliament contains a clause which would ban people from viewing adult material with “non-conventional sexual acts”.
- material (including dialogue) likely to encourage an interest in sexually abusive activity which may include adults role-playing as non-adults
The Digital Economy Bill under consideration by parliament proposes giving regulation of online pornography to the current regulator of pornographic DVDs
While there are no strict guidelines as to what acts and images can’t be shown on commercial DVDs, adult film producers have found that they have had to cut almost all kinds of non-conventional videos from their films.
A representative confirmed to the Guardian that the BBFC would be checking through videos and applying the same standards to online pornography that it would offline. Just as with problems with age verification, if the BBFC finds a site it objects to then it will send a “notification of non-compliance” meant to force the site to stop.
The British Board of Film Classification’s (BBFC) guidelines give a non-exhaustive list of all of the things that will not be accepted in R18 – the regulators’ highest restriction and the one that all porn shown to users in the UK must now satisfy.
In 2014, new legislation banned many of the above sexual acts from pornography produced in the UK. However, the new bill will apply not only to footage filmed in Britain, but would stop British viewers accessing any websites from around the world which contain the controversial acts.
They include rules about “penetration by any object associated with violence”, for instance. They also ban any sexual act deemed “obscene” under the Obscene Publications Act, which was passed in 1959.
