Kink.com’s Acworth Issues Video Response to British Porn Ban

CYBERSPACE—Kink.com founder Peter Acworth has fired back at British Prime Minister David Cameron for his proposed ban on internet pornography in a video message that went live on BehindKink.com this weekend. Cameron has proposed that adult sites be blocked by default, and that certain types of porn — including BDSM porn — be made illegal. In the video, Acworth, a British national, cites multiple reasons the Cameron plan is flawed. One of his key points is that the effective ban on explicit images is an effective ban on sexual education: “How does one determine where pornography stops and educational material starts," argues Acworth in the video. "Strikes me as extremely problematic laws put in place. So you’re telling me if I go to a library in England, I’m not going to be able to look at sex educational websites because they will potentially be filtered, that seems to me to be denying the British people of information that they need to have.” Acworth also cites research that counters the claims of anti-porn activists that internet porn leads to greater sex crimes. The study found that rape in the United States has declined 85 percent in the years since the dawn of the internet: “If it were true to say that pornography caused heinous crimes, one would think heinous crimes would have skyrocketed in direct proportion," he says. "That is not the case. During this period with the proliferation of pornography on the internet, the incidents of rape, heinous crimes such as rape, has actually plummeted - gone down enormously during that same period. And so if anything, there is a correlation in the other direction, so the basis for this ridiculous war on pornography is evidence which is fundamentally flawed, in my opinion. This isn’t the first time Acworth has tried to reach out to Cameron. In July, the CEO penned an open letter to the UK Prime Minister, both on his blog and Behind Kink, Kink.com’s in-house news site. The video can be viewed in its entirety here. To date, there has been no response by Prime Minister David Cameron. For more information, visit Kink.com or BehindKink.com.