British Video Recordings Act 1984 Invalid 340
chrb writes "BBC News is reporting that the British Video Recordings Act 1984 is invalid due to a 25 year old legal blunder. The Thatcher government of the day failed to officially "notify" the European Commission about the law, and hence it no longer stands as a legal Act. There will now be a period of around three months before the Act can be passed again, during which time it will be entirely legal to sell any video content without age-rated certifications."
OMG, freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
What are we going to do with it?
so who will (Score:2, Insightful)
Hang On (Score:4, Insightful)
Hurray?! (Score:5, Insightful)
So when society DOESN'T collapse into anarchy, are they going to realize this law was idiotic and unnecessary and not pass it again?
Just watch... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hang On (Score:5, Insightful)
Can a British lawyer please tell me at what point notification of the European Commission became a requirement for an Act of Parliament to become legally binding? Surely such a surrender of sovereignty was exactly the sort of thing Thatcher opposed?
You call that surrender of sovereignty? Think again. The government didn't have to ask for permission to pass this law, it was only supposed to inform the European Commission. In other words: make it public, so their European partner countries know what's happening in their neighborhood. That's just common sense.
Re:Another implication (Score:5, Insightful)
"Existing convictions will stand"
In other words "existing convictions will collapse as soon as they are challenged in court, but let's lie about this and hope that everyone believes us".
Re:Scandalous (Score:1, Insightful)
FTA:
"Our legal advice is that those previously prosecuted will be unable to overturn their prosecution or receive financial recompense," she said.
So people who were previously prosecuted for breaking a non-law will be unable to overturn their prosecution.
Overturn their conviction perhaps.
Re:Another implication (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not how we do it in the UK mate. Here we make as many laws as possible, criminalizing as many people as we can. This so that when we decide we don't like them anymore there's a quick exit waiting. It also makes it easier for the police to root out the bad guys. When everybody has committed at least one crime, gives them leverage.
This was an embarressing oversight, normal service will be resumed shortly.
Re:Hang On (Score:5, Insightful)
Even having said that, though, I would argue that the simple requirement to inform other nations of standards and laws you pass is not really any more of a surrendering of sovereignty than most other provisions in any other treaty between nations.
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those "no-longer restricted videos" have as much to do with teaching sex as a monster truck rally has to do with teaching you how to drive.
Re:at least they're fixing it (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad you've been marked "troll" because you're flat wrong.
Time-and-time again laws have been declared unconstitutional and the prisoners freed (see my previous post filled with quotes). Just watch Henry Fonda's excellent movie "Gideon" for an example which is about a real man who stood-up against tyranny, and won.
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole idea of the European *Union* is that part of the sovereignty is sacrificed for something beneficial, like open borders (good for the economy), and reducing the likelyhood of war between European countries (you can think of the EU as a response to two world wars).
Not everybody is happy about that, of course, partly because the EU is not as democratic as it should be. In some countries the EU constitution was voted away in a referendum because of that.
Re:Scandalous (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Britain doesn't even have a constitution.
No problemo. They can take ours. We're sure not using it.
Tom Lehre's Smut Lyrics (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Tom Lehre said it best in his song called Smut.
I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it. Unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on but we know what's really involved: dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that I suppose. It's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution unfortunately. Anyway, since people seem to be marching for their causes these days I have here a march for mine. It's called...
Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut,
If it's uncut,
and unsubt- le.
I've never quibbled
If it was ribald,
I would devour where others merely nibbled.
As the judge remarked the day that he
acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
"To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance."
Por-
Nographic pictures I adore.
Indecent magazines galore,
I like them more
If they're hard core.
(Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties,
samplers, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I'm still not satisfied!)
Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious, and vile,
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
(Let's face it, I love slime.)
All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder,
For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan,
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)
I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill,
And I suppose I always will,
If it is swill
And really fil
thy.
Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.
But now they're trying to take it all
away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand
we fight for freedom of the press.
In other words,
Smut! (I love it)
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut,
I don't know what
Compares with smut.
Hip hip hooray!
Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don't let them take it away!
Re:so who will (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because this is SUCH an emergency. Kids will turn into goat slaughtering satanist child molesters INSTANTLY because of this, mark my words!
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just watch... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll admit that I don't follow UK politics very closely. But I thought that draconian censorship was more of a Tory thing.
No, it's a government thing.
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:3, Insightful)
They passed a law saying they had to notify the EU in order for a certain new laws to be valid, then failed to do so with another law ...
So in the US if one law conflicts with another both are valid .... strange system you have ?
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really, because the nation in question - Britain, has signed up to have that as part of the deal.
If Britain hadn't signed up to this and Europe was still enforcing this you'd have a point, but as it's Britain's choice to only allow laws to be legitimate if reported to Europe then it's still a sovereign nation.
It can get out of this agreement any time it wants but there's not really any reason to as it's not a big deal. Besides, nowadays Europe does a better job of running Britain than the current Labour government does. Certainly the European court of human rights and the EU itself have done more to protect my human rights and civil liberties as a citizen than my own government which has repeatedly tried to violate them.
Even if Europe was in control of Britain then and did actively choose not to ratify laws like this it could only be a good thing until unelected Brown and his unelected cronies like Mandelson get kicked out next year.
Re:the comments on these stories always make me la (Score:3, Insightful)
What? Hysteria? In my Slashdot? Okay I think I'm going to actually get modded down for this, but seriously, while reactions on Slashdot are often hysteric (i.e. "OMG CCTVs/Internet filtering/copyright laws, futuristic dystopia here we come!"), Slashdot has a dominantly American audience (56.5% according to my stats, +9.1% if you count Canada in), and it's just American hysteria.
Just look at how people react to news in the USA, the healthcare reform is the latest and best example of American hysteria at work (but you have lots of examples since the 20th century). A fairly popular administration wants to fix a messed up healthcare system by adding options, and people go "OMG Nazi fascism they want to kill babies and grandmothers!!!". Sure, FOX News and what's left of the Republican party are helping, but the fact that what they do actually works should reveal something about the American society. Would it work in France, Germany or the Netherlands? Doubt it.
People often talk about how Americans as a whole, as a herd, are stupid. They're not directly stupid, they're just very susceptible to hysteria. I don't know where it's coming from but it's something deeply embedded in the American culture. It certainly had its fair share of participation in bringing about the prohibition, McCarthyism (what witchhunt isn't rooted in hysteria?), all sorts of reactions and attitudes during the Cold War, but more recently, the aftermath of the 9/11 (again a prime example of hysteria, and undoubtedly the main reason for the Iraqi invasion to go domestically mostly unchallenged at the time. Same thing for the boycott of France, that went something like "OMG France if you're not with us you're against us!!!"), and yes, even the global warming and creationism debate (which are practically inexistent in civilised nations that are not satellites of the USA). I cannot stress enough how big a part hysteria plays in America, this is not a new phenomenon at all, and if you're American you may not realise this but this is actually very characteristic, believe it or not but some other societies are more cool headed. Here's the good news though, you're not stupid, just hysteric, to the point of getting into stupid stuff, until a few years after the cause that triggered the hysteria is gone you realise it was stupid.
So yeah, Slashdot, its hysteric reactions and projections of doom and dystopia just reflects that.
Oh that awesome British independence (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought that "independence" was a French word, but clearly it must have drifted quite a lot in meaning since king William. From New Labour to the Tories and the fucktards at UKIP, it seemed quite compatible with bending over backward to please GWB and begging for more. Now when Brussels asks you to follow simple rules you agreed to and 24 other countries have no problem adhering to, that's an outrage.
What a joke.
Re:This is absurd (Score:4, Insightful)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, at least these days, there is some grassroots movement these days, to try to stop the loss of power/independence in the states...and push back a bit on the federal govt.
I only hope it isn't too little too late.
With the way the current bits of legislation are going, with the feds taking over everything, well, there might be a backlash against it all....maybe the current administration IS what we need to get people to rally for what the US was founded upon.
Maybe.
Re:at least they're fixing it (Score:3, Insightful)
What you said, specifically, was "so many violent criminals manage to dodge convictions here based on legal technicalities." That makes it sound like we have some plague of people who are actually guilty of violent crimes using legal trickery to avoid paying the penalties for their actions. While such cases do happen, the vast majority of the time when a "technicality" gets someone off, it's because it's not at all clear whether or not they actually committed the crime, and/or it is quite clear that the evidence against them is invalid. In short, it's the system working exactly the way it's supposed to.
Those "technicalities" are the only thing standing between us and a police state. Decades of cop show writers have used "off on a technicality" as a convenient plot device to explain why an obvious bad guy is still running around on the street -- which is why people think of them as "technicalities" instead of what they are, which is Constitutional protections of fundamental liberties. This is a serious threat to our freedom.
So that's why the outrage, pretty much.
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:4, Insightful)
I am far from reactionary, I've held and argued my views for quite some time, as I learned more of how my country, the USA, was set up, I found I agree more and more with the founding fathers and the way the govt is supposed to work. It worked VERY well for nearly 200 years, but, people like you want to fundamentally change it. I respect your views, I'm happy to debate it, but, I don't agree with them, and I'll be happy to fight to keep not only keep the US from moving towards a more centralized govt. but, to go back more to our roots which made the US great to begin with.
I believe the US federal govt. as originally set up to be weak with limited enumerated powers, it the best way to go, my state govt, city govt. is closer to me, has the same interests and me, and is more responsive to mine and my community's needs.
I believe I am a citizen of my state first, and a citizen of the United States second.
What is best for someone in NYC, is often NOT the best thing for someone in New Orleans, Anchorage or Phoenix. Each region has different needs, and all our views and needs are EQUAL within the union.
Care to specifically elaborate what you think makes an argument for changing more and more to a strong centralized govt. from what the US was originally set up to be? How would a strong central govt. that interferes more with the individual's life have made us a greater country than they way we made our path until recent years?
Re:OMG, freedom. (Score:2, Insightful)
You do realize that less than 80 years after the Constitution was drafted there was a war that killed millions of Americans and nearly rent the nation in twain all because of how the Constitution was drafted, right?