Dreams Of Spanking: Going Offline Soon, Because Censorship
(Updated with new August 7 link.)
I don’t know how many of you have been following Pandora Blake’s unhappy saga as her egalitarian fairtrade ethical spanking porn studio and life’s work, Dreams Of Spanking, has come under the dire scrutiny of the British censoring body known as ATVOD. Today she was forced to stop selling new memberships, and it looks like her site is going offline (pending appeals) as of August 27:
It's happened – ATVOD sent their Final Determination. We will be appealing to Ofcom. Memberships to the site are no longer available to buy.
— Dreams of Spanking (@DreamofSpanking) August 4, 2015
We have 20 working days to comply with their demands. Existing members can access the site until 27 Aug, after that it will go offline.
— Dreams of Spanking (@DreamofSpanking) August 4, 2015
ATVOD demands we register and pay up, put all adult content behind credit card paywall, and take 'prohibited' content offline altogether.
— Dreams of Spanking (@DreamofSpanking) August 4, 2015
Over half our scenes contain 'prohibited' content – removing them would gut the site. Paywall means no more free trailers or photo previews.
— Dreams of Spanking (@DreamofSpanking) August 4, 2015
It's impossible for us to comply with ATVOD's demands without undermining our core principles of authenticity, transparency & accessibility.
— Dreams of Spanking (@DreamofSpanking) August 4, 2015
If this makes you as angry as it makes us, please donate to @backlashuk, who are providing us & other affected producers with legal support.
— Dreams of Spanking (@DreamofSpanking) August 4, 2015
If you want to know more, Pandora has been documenting the whole sorry story in a series of blog posts over this past spring and summer. They are:
- The first letter (16 April 2015)
- Under investigation by ATVOD (7 May 2015)
- ATVOD — The Preliminary View (12 June 2015)
- Dear ATVOD (27 July 2015)
- When The Axe Falls (7 August 2015)
See Also:
Those bastards. I’m so sorry. Pandora has done wonderful work, and fought the good fight.
I’m not giving up on her yet. The English legal system is pretty opaque to me from this side of the pond, but I’m given to understand that she’s got good representation from an org that is committed to British freedom of expression, and that there’s hopeful precedent in the form of at least one other indy adult site that went up through the appeals process and managed to beat the bastards. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a “good” outcome.
I have to put those scare quotes around “good” because from what little I know about running adult pay sites (something I’ve never done) anything that takes you offline and interrupts your billing relationships with existing customers is a mortal blow to your financials. When you come back online you have to start from scratch, and some of the long-term customers you had before you’ll never get back. Likewise links, search engine rankings, and all that. It’s very painful, and will set Pandora back quite a ways even if she wins in court and gets the right to continue doing business as she has been used to.
SpankBoss, you’re absolutely right. Still, it would be a moral victory, at least. And if the appeal is overthrown, the next step is a Judicial Review, which would be more expensive but would have the advantage that it would get these new regulations into the Courts, at which point we have a chance of actually getting a ruling that they are invalid. An appeal win would be cheaper and simpler, but it would only affect Dreams of Spanking, not everyone else. Thanks for the good wishes. We are living in interesting times!
The cynic in me says you’ll get a win at the appeal stage precisely because it will keep you out of the courts where you might upset the applecart. For your sake I hope so, even though — as you say — the longer harder road has a better shiny at the end.
I’m just wondering, Pandora, whether it would be legally possible, and financially acceptable to you, to make the existing content available somehow under creative commons, as you did the sponsored videos for Backlash. It would spectacularly spike the guns of the sanctimonious, authoritarian twats at ATVOD! (BTW, I’m not a freeloader. I’ve had a few periods of membership and already have most of your stuff.)
Isambard, that sounds like an end-game move to me. My impression is that Pandora is still hoping to win in court and get her site fully operational again, in which case, any CC release would have been premature. Let’s not burn any bridges before we have to cross them!
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My heart goes out to you. Pardon my vulgarity, but this really fucking sucks. With all the buffoonery going on in England and the rest of the world, the government decides to crack down on what turns people on and is practiced within consenting adults. Hopefully this law goes the way of the dodo just like the video nasties law did.
Many respects and thank you for all the luscious imagery!!!!!! :)