“The UK is really pushing for limits on free speech,” says Michael Fattorosi, an adult industry attorney based in Italy. “This is just something they’re throwing on top of the heap of restrictions.”
In a statement to WIRED, Clara Coleman, a spokesperson for the UK’s Ministry of Justice, denied that the legislation was intended to curb sexual expression. “We’re committed to halving violence against women and girls in a decade, and that includes preventing harm before it starts,” Coleman says. “[These] laws aren’t about policing people’s sexual freedom, they’re about cracking down on content that normalizes violence against women, encourages unlawful behavior, and can cause real-world harm.”
Jackman, the lawyer, says that he has no issue with the provision banning strangulation, as its risks are proven and there are existing laws banning strangulation in the UK. He cautions, however, that the law is written broadly enough that relatively innocuous content could also potentially be penalized.
“It would be up to a court to decide this on a case-by-case basis, but given that it would appear that face-sitting by a vagina owner is now arguably suffocation, the insertion of a penis could equally be considered suffocation because it blocks the airways,” he says. In other words, “the UK could have just banned blow jobs” in online pornography.
Though the law currently applies only to consumers and creators in the United Kingdom, the stiff penalties for “possession” of such images—which the law defines as an image being stored on a phone, a hard drive, or in cloud storage—is of particular concern to Fattorosi.
“As far as creators are concerned, if you visit the UK, if you’re going there on holiday, if you’re going there for a conference, you should probably be careful about what you keep on your phone,” he says.
The subscription-based platform OnlyFans is particularly vulnerable, he adds. Though most American porn companies don’t have a substantial presence in the UK, making it difficult for Ofcom to go after them, that doesn’t apply to OnlyFans. The subscription-based platform’s parent company, Fenix International Limited, is based in the United Kingdom and has already faced steep fines from the agency for failure to adhere to age-disclosure requirements.