ABSTRACT
Over the past 50 or so years, the subject of pornography has come to loom particularly large in debates about censorship and freedom of expression. One reason for this, undoubtedly, is the amount of material easily available online which many deem pornographic. And although there is a good deal of disagreement about what actually constitutes pornography, Eric Barendt makes the usefully straightforward point that the word “pornography” is “conventionally used to refer to sexually explicit representations, whether in the form of a book, film, photograph, or other image” (2005: 352), although it should be stressed that not all sexually explicit representations are necessarily pornographic, and nor is all material that is classified as obscene. This chapter will outline the laws governing pornography, obscenity and indecency in the UK, and the kinds of material which have traditionally fallen foul of them. In particular it will chart the changes in the law which have made the possession of certain kinds of material an offence, and not simply their production and distribution.
