Dreams Of Spanking: Enjoy It While You Can
Pandora Blake has made no secret of the fact that her Dreams Of Spanking website (which we have greatly enjoyed here at Spanking Blog) has been under serious regulatory threat since that ridiculous-but-terrifying censorious regulatory regime went into effect last year in Great Britain. (From this great distance, my murky impression is that a fading agency primarily responsible for regulating the adult content of DVDs — which have long been heavily censored in Britain — has made a successful grab for power, relevance, and funding, by the expedient of saying “adult websites are like old-fashioned video-on-demand services, which we also regulate because they used to just play DVDs over the cable TV network, so we ought to be able to regulate websites too!”)
Regulatory officialdom in Great Britain turns out to be impossibly hostile to BDSM and kinky stuff, the more so if it involves women in any role other than the traditionally-submissive. Thus it has been clear from the start that this is an existential threat to sites like Dreams Of Spanking. Pandora has legal representation and the courage to speak out, be activist, and keep doing what she’s doing, but there’s a lot of legal and financial peril involved. As an outspoken activist, it was probably inevitable that she would clash with regulatory authorities sooner rather than later, and indeed that day has come:
Some bad news. http://t.co/21dcEzTn78 #atvod #censorship #ukporncensorship
— Pandora Blake (@pandorablake) April 16, 2015
If you like Dreams Of Spanking, go read her post. Many people are rooting for her, and we can wish for a triumphant outcome, but that’s by no means a sure thing. As Pandora says (and I do not think she’s being either melodramatic or self-serving here):
If you haven’t yet joined the site, do it now, while you still can – time is running out, and legal fees are expensive.
Verbum sapienti satis.
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This sucks BIG TIME and I hope that Pandora makes it through… I know exactly how she felt, I received a generic grasping email from ATVOD stating “webmaster” to my (former) site’s webmaster address late last year. I was filming & it knocked me for six & made me massively depressed as I knew they would badger me so I took the decision to transfer complete control/editing & everything else to my partner (Sarah Gregory) – it hurt that something I loved, built up, spent a lot of money on for 4 years was kind of taken from me as I don’t own it anymore & had to trust Sarah (which I do!) & am paid as an affiliate, not as an owner.
I took legal advice at my own expense & now I spend half the time in the US & the other, reluctantly in the UK. I only promote the site I built up via the usual routes & blogs you may see me on, I know every film intimately of course & still film in the US using Sarah’s editor for all editing which I have no control of now. This is what a It is a shame Pandora can not go down this avenue and I hope she gets all the support to make a stand & fight this ludicrous law for her or anyone else bullied by those unelected – holding onto laws & ideas passed several decades ago. It is interesting to note Britain is one of the most REPRESSIVE countries in the world for internet porn, they rank alongside China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia – I find that rather odd & disturbing. Of course right now… It doesn’t stop the flood of “foreign owned” BDSM or whatever “banned porn” they are trying to regulate websites from showing their wares to the British public (incl my former site, I guess).
As I said, I think ATVOD are bullies, that is clear from the accounts, incl Pandora’s I have heard of. I honestly don’t think it would hold up in a court of law & could set a precedent, but my thoughts & wishes are with Pandora, her partner & I know Backlash will help her out… like she said, she knew it was coming… she had been very vocal. It still hurts though! She once told me that she didn’t give a shit about being outed… I on the other hand, would have very unforgiving neighbors & couldn’t take that chance to fight. They think what we do is probably something akin to pedophilia since the British public are obsessed with this: Eg “schoolgirl spanking scenarios” would fall into that category in their mindset. I experienced this from “friends” who “didn’t get fantasy roleplays” – Support Pandora the best way you can, be a member of her fab site!
For those who do not follow the British political scene, I can assure you it’s worse than you (and probably Pandora Blake) know. This is not some isolated attack against femdom sites, spanking, BDSM, or even pornography in general – there is no longer any freedom of speech as we understand the term left in Great Britain. A man was arrested for telling a joke about Nelson Mandela; another was charged with a “hate crime” for quoting a book of Winston Churchill’s!
For British citizens, I would strongly recommend you take a look at the UKIP party, for there is little difference between Labor and Tory at this point. Nor should Americans be complacent: a major political party (I won’t say which one here) and its likely Presidential candidate has come out in favor of repealing the First Amendment.
I am really not qualified to comment on British politics, sadly. We here in the US fought a modest but quite serious war to get free of all that more than 200 years ago, and anyway I find enough to despair about in US politics. I will say that if UKIP is genuinely the most stalwart defender of liberty and free speech in British politics, those politics are even more depressing than I had realized.