Depraving and corrupting

Good news! From The Guardian today:

It was the law used in the controversial prosecution of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Now the Obscene Publications Act, which came into force in 1959, appears to be on its last legs.

On Friday, in one of the most significant cases of recent years, a London jury rejected prosecution claims that gay pornography depicting acts that are legal between consenting adults were capable of "depraving and corrupting" those who watched them on DVDs.

The case, at Southwark crown court, threatens to have implications far beyond the acquittal of pornographer Michael Peacock, who ran a mail-order business and had been targeted by an undercover vice officer.

Officials at the British Board of Film Classification, as well as police officers involved in prosecuting obscenity cases, have admitted that the current laws on what is obscene may require a major rethink.

The act was used, unsuccessfully, against Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover, when a jury was asked whether it was the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read". It was deployed more successfully in 1971 against Oz magazine, although that prosecution was overturned on appeal, and unsuccessfully again against the book Inside Linda Lovelace, which led to the police view that it was almost impossible to prosecute for obscenity in cases of written representations of sex.

The latest case – which saw a jury take two hours to return not guilty verdicts – comes amid growing concern that Britain's obscenity laws, which have multiplied in recent years with new laws on the possession of "extreme pornography", are contradictory, ill-defined and illogical.

Indeed. The Obscene Publications Act is a stupid and out-of-date law, it should have gone long ago. We fans of French cinema will be pleased...