Australia in its aggressive quest to lead the western world in banning ideas that aren’t officially licensed by the state is changing its child pornography laws so that artistic merit is no longer a hindrance in prosecuting artists whose work includes children. According to the Sidney Morning Herald:
ARTISTS who create images of nude children would have to pay $500 an image to get Commonwealth classification to make absolutely sure they would not be prosecuted under new child pornography laws.
And what happens if they judge the work to be child porn? Do they arrest you on the spot?
[Artist Polixeni Papapetrou] criticised the law change yesterday and asked whether she could be prosecuted if her work were judged by authorities as child pornography, saying: ”I think they’re barking up the wrong tree. I really think they should be going after those people who exploit children.
Actually, Polixeni, the “authorities” are probably the biggest exploiters of children there is.
Is the art commuinity raising a shit storm over this? Not really:
The law change received cautious support from the executive director of the National Association for Visual Arts, Tamara Winikoff, who said artists were working with the director of public prosecutions on ”protective protocols so that art experts are consulted and can advise on whether the material had been produced by a genuine artist”.
I’m sure that “art experts” are quite ready to enter into a partnership with government censors to render judgment on what constitutes “genuine art”. While they undoubtedly don’t like having their own work judged and dismissed as crap, they apparently can’t wait to play god themselves. When it comes to free speech, the world owes far more to the porn industry that it ever will to the art community who are usually too busy looking for their next government handout to concern themselves with trivial issues like censorship.
Asked if parents who submitted a photo of their children naked for public exhibition now needed to get those photos classified, Ms Winikoff said:”That’s a matter of their own judgment.”
To think this law won’t have a chilling effect on art that includes children demonstrates ignorance on a massive scale. How does someone that intellectually vacuous get to be executive director of an national arts organization?
The final paragraph really defines the extent to which the government is exploiting the child porn hysteria that has gripped Australia as well as most of the western world.
Under other changes to the law, witnesses as well as child abuse victims will be able to give evidence by video link and those they accuse will not be allowed to cross-examine them.
Perhaps in the next set of changes to the law they can just dispense with the trial all together and take the accused out and shoot him in the local stadium to the sound of cheering crowds.