UK Approaches To the Regulation of Online Pornography

Julia Hörnle, Queen Mary University of London, School of Law, has published Countering the Dangers of Online Pornography--Shrewd Regulation of Lewd Content?, as Queen Mary School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper 65/2010. Here is the abstract.

This Article will detail how the UK has responded to the greater risks posed by illegal online content by successively extending the reach of the substantive criminal laws and by taking preventative measures. It will focus on the example of laws on obscene content on the internet and associated online behaviour and in particular on the 'grooming' offences, the law on extreme pornography and virtual child abuse images. An assessment of these offences against the 'harm principle' is made and while the internet's role in facilitating such offences is acknowledged, the article argues that in some respect the legislation has overshot the mark.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.