Censorship in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom censorship has been applied to various forms of expression such as the media, cinema, entertainment venues, literature, theatre and criticism of the monarchy.
[3] Current law allows for restrictions on threatening or abusive words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress or cause a breach of the peace,[4][5][6] sending another any article which is indecent or grossly offensive with an intent to cause distress or anxiety,[7][8][9] incitement,[10] incitement to racial hatred,[11] incitement to religious hatred, incitement to terrorism including encouragement of terrorism and dissemination of terrorist publications,[10][12][13] glorifying terrorism,[14][15] collection or possession of a document or record containing information likely to be of use to a terrorist,[16][17] treason,[18][19][20][21][22] sedition,[19] obscenity,[23] indecency including corruption of public morals and outraging public decency,[24] defamation,[25] prior restraint, restrictions on court reporting (including names of victims and evidence and prejudicing or interfering with court proceedings,[26][27] prohibition of post-trial interviews with jurors),[27] time, manner, and place restrictions,[28] harassment, privileged communications, trade secrets, classified material, copyright, patents, military conduct, and limitations on commercial speech such as advertising.
The OPA was tested in the high-profile obscenity trial brought against Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover (by D. H. Lawrence) in 1960.
[31] This trial did not establish the 'merit' defence as an automatic right; several controversial books and publications were the subject of British court cases throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s.
The distinction between legal erotic literature and illegal pornography was traditionally made in the English-speaking courts on the basis of perceived literary merit.
No prosecutions of purely textual pornography took place following the Inside Linda Lovelace trial of 1976[32] until October 2008 when a man was charged (but later cleared) under the Obscene Publications Act for allegedly posting fictional written material to the Internet describing kidnap, rape and murder of pop group Girls Aloud (the R v Walker trial).
[33][34] In late August 2005, the government announced that it planned to criminalise possession of extreme pornographic material, rather than just publication,[35] and the law came into force as Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
[42] According to the myth, the BBFC would not permit the general release of a film or video if it depicted a penis erect to the point that the angle it made from the vertical was higher than that of the peninsula of Kintyre in Argyll and Bute on maps of Scotland.
According to Rufus Osgood Mason (who gives an example of a written license from 1814): Charles Kemble, later in life, received the appointment of "Examiner of Plays".
Blasphemy against Christianity was long an important part of British censorship, with the unwritten common law containing an offence of blasphemous libel.
[58][59] Leaders of major religions[60] as well as non-religious groups such as the National Secular Society[61] and English PEN[62] spoke out in order to campaign against the Bill.
[69][16][17] Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, 23, from Wolverhampton, is believed to be the first person convicted of collecting information likely to be of use to a terrorist, including the al-Qaeda publication Inspire.
[16][17] Since then, Ben Raymond of the group National Action has also been convicted, among other charges, of possession of terrorist information, including Anders Breivik's manifesto and a guide to homemade detonators.
Further confirmation of this change in attitude was provided by the French film Baise-moi, which was given an 18 certificate despite showing scenes of unsimulated sexual activity.
Self-regulation seeks to keep content within the bounds of what is publicly acceptable, thus preventing government intervention to bring about official regulation.
The Rules of Coverage released by the House of Commons Broadcasting Committee place severe limitations on the use of this footage, including a prohibition of its use in the context of political satire.
[91] In 2011, gagging orders that applied to themselves, or "super-injunctions" as they were called, were being referred to almost daily in the United Kingdom after a number of high-profile public figures, including celebrities and politicians, censored the British media from revealing information about their personal lives, such as affairs[92] and dealings with prostitutes.
[97][98] Combating terrorism and preventing child abuse have been widely used by state agencies and private commercial actors (e.g. Internet service providers) to justify the implementation of interception and direct filtering measures.
In July and again in October 2011, the UK High Court ruled that BT Retail must block access to a website (newzbin.com) which "provides links to pirated movies".
[105] In May 2012 the High Court ordered UK ISPs to block The Pirate Bay to prevent further copyright infringing movie and music downloads facilitated by the website.
[106][107] Soon after, the High Court ordered UK ISPs to block other websites linking to, or endorsing online "piracy", such as KickAss Torrents (kat.ph).
[109] In 2017, Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecution, announced the allocation of additional resources for enforcing it and the intent to treat online speech as equivalent to a conversation in person.
[111] Digital secretary Margot James also outlined a plan to increase government regulation of social networks with possible penalties including 4% of the firm's global turnover.
After the refusal by ten technology companies to send representatives to a meeting he held, he stated that this gave him "a big impetus to drive these proposals to legislate through".
[114][115] In February 2021 a Scottish man from Lanark was arrested and subsequently convicted for an ''offensive tweet'' insulting (deceased) World War 2 veteran Thomas Moore, which read: “The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella buuuuurn” .
Since March 2019, the Digital Economy Act 2017 has given the government power to require certain websites to implement an age verification scheme, under rules defined in the Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2019.
Among things absolutely banned were jokes about lavatories, effeminacy in men, immorality of any kind, suggestive references to honeymoon couples, chambermaids, fig leaves, ladies' underwear (e.g. "winter draws on"), prostitution, and the vulgar use of words such as "basket".
The Witch Is Dead from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, rose to number two in the BBC Radio 1 UK singles chart as many people bought the song to celebrate the former PM's death.
Nevertheless, although games are generally exempt from the Video Recordings Act, those depicting sexual content, or gross violence towards people or animals, must still be submitted to the BBFC for consideration.
[141] The game's publisher, SCI, had a modified version created in which the pedestrians in question were replaced by green-blooded zombies, which completed a successful appeal against the BBFC to overturn their original decision.
