from:http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1165703,00.html

US and UK crack down on web porn

Press Association

Tuesday March 9, 2004

Britain and the United States are to work together to shut down violent sex websites, it emerged today.

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic will decide how to act against extreme pornographic sites, which were implicated in the trial of the man who killed Brighton teacher Jane Longhurst.

Initial steps were agreed by the home secretary, David Blunkett, during a meeting with the US deputy attorney general, Jim Comey, at the department of justice in Washington DC.

Longhurst’s family met Mr Blunkett in London last week as part of their campaign to ban sites that feature necrophilia and other extreme sexual acts.

Mr Blunkett’s official spokesman said: “The department of justice was very interested in what we had to say and we agreed it was a significant problem, not in terms of numbers but in terms of the evil of these sites.

“We also agreed we would put our heads together to get some action on the issue.

Longhurst was strangled by musician Graham Coutts, 35, from Hove, East Sussex, just hours after he viewed websites such as Necrobabes and Hangingbitches.

He was jailed for life for murdering the young special needs teacher, whose corpse he stashed in a storage unit for 35 days.

The spokesman noted the legal implications of a crackdown were “more complicated” than banning child pornography, for example, because of the first amendment in the US, which establishes freedom of expression.

But possible action could involve work with internet service providers and credit card companies, whose services enable users to pay to access porn on the web, he added.

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Alessa: 1) Isn´t it wonderful, first that it takes a murder in the spotlight for this to happen? How many other murders have gone by that nobody paid attention to where the murderer was influenced by such material?

2) Notice that they are only going to do something to shut down “extreme” sites. What is an “extreme” site? If sites debase people, sexually harass them, denigrate them sexually, rape but do not murder them, that´s all very fine, isn´t it?

3) Are Americans´ concepts about freedom of speech a little diseased or what?