European Parliament Decides Not To Ban Internet Porn

An anonymous reader writes "The European Parliament passed a proposal Tuesday which included a blanket ban on pornography, including Internet porn, in European Union member states. However, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) removed explanatory wording from the porn ban section, essentially limiting the ban to advertising and print media. The proposal, titled 'Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU,' was put to a vote in Strasbourg. MEPs passed it 368-159."

Re:thought police

[ohnocitizen]

Orwellian would be if the proposal was titled "Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU", and it told companies they had to have gender stereotypes in their ads. Instead, take a look at the actual proposal [europa.eu]. They are concerned about the uneven usage of sexuality to sell products, and the message that sends. They have clearly screwed up the logistics of tackling that issue, but the relationship between the bill itself and the content is not Orwellian.

Re:thought police

[misexistentialist]

And actually what they will be doing is promoting positive female and homosexual stereotypes, and censoring negative stereotypes; while discouraging positive straight male stereotypes, and ignoring negative stereotypes.

Re:thought police

[fche]

"They are concerned about the uneven usage of sexuality to sell products, and the message that sends."

They do much more than that.

"... In order to tackle the problem of the lack of women at the higher levels of economic and political decision-making, the persistence of gender stereotypes in all levels of society need to be addressed. ..."

IOW, affirmative action at the "decision-making" level, accomplished by thorough social engineering, by e.g. deliberate suppression of traditional ideas. That's pretty drastic stuff, not just about commercial speech - i.e., advertising with attractive models.

Re:thought police

[ohnocitizen]

Apparently we are all incorrect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwellian [wikipedia.org]. Yay.

Looking at the actual law, can you point out how they are regulating thoughts? K, thanks. Because it looks like they are regulating advertising.

Re:What was the reason for wanting to ban it?

[Patch86]

Quit with the trolling nonsense. The bill was proposed by the "Women's Rights and Gender Equality" committee, which, at a glance, the majority of members of which belong to the European People's Party (Christian Democrats). We are quite capable of producing a homegrown religious "Think of the Children" brigade without resorting to Islam.

The offensive bit of the directive (the sweeping ban on otherwise legal material on the internet) has been removed, so democracy has done it's job. The rest of the bill is a typical EU directive- well meaning, high-minded stuff which is far too broad to be meaningfully implemented. That's fine too; that's a part of how our not-even-federal system works in Europe; the details should be (and in this case are) left entirely to the member states.