http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/homemade-porn-for-private-use-is-legal/437517
Homemade Porn for Private Use Is Legal Arientha Primanita | April 26, 2011 The verdict is in: making your own sex video is not illegal. In a landmark ruling on Tuesday, the Constitutional Court threw out a request for a judicial review of the 2008 Anti-Pornography Law, which sought an amendment to criminalize the filming of sex videos for private use. Chief Justice Mahfud M.D., in rejecting the request for a review filed by controversial lawyer Farhat Abbas, said: "The plaintiffs' argument does not have a legal basis." Article 4 of the law bans people from producing pornographic material, while Article 6 prohibits people from storing or broadcasting it. However, Farhat's camp has said supplementary explanations of the law exclude materials "for personal use and interest." "If pornography is for 'personal use,' the actor might be seen as a victim [when material is distributed without consent], when in fact pornography exists because of the actors in the first place," Muhammad Burhanuddin, one of Farhat's lawyers, had argued. However, Justice Ahmad Fadlil Sumadi said that while the court agreed with the plaintiffs that pornography violated norms of decency if made public, the point here was that a homemade video for private use was not meant to be made public. "If something containing pornographic elements is used solely for one's self, it doesn't violate public decency or disturb public order," he said. He added that the court considered Articles 4 and 6 constitutional. "The court believes there is no unconstitutionality or contradiction here, as long as the material in question is for one's own use," Fadlil stressed. Farhat and his camp sought the judicial review in the wake of the celebrity sex video scandal involving Nazril "Ariel" Irham, the frontman for the band Peterpan. The videos appeared on the Internet last year. One allegedly showed Ariel with his girlfriend, Luna Maya, while another was said to show him with TV presenter Cut Tari. Ariel has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison on a charge of distributing pornography, not for making the films, although he insists he did not upload the videos to the Internet. Anwar Sadat, a representative for the plaintiffs, said that while the request for the judicial review had been rejected, the two women in the Ariel case should still be held accountable. "The makers of sex videos must also be punished," he said. "We know that Ariel has been sentenced to prison, but what about Luna Maya and Cut Tari?" However, criminal law expert Edi Hiariej, from Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University, has said the supplementary explanations to the law excluding material for personal use were the reason police would not be able to charge Ariel, Luna or Cut Tari under the pornography law. Anwar said he was not disappointed with the Constitutional Court's ruling but would examine the pornography law again thoroughly. "We'll just accept the ruling and make revisions for another request for a judicial review that we'll file in the future," he said. He declined to say when the group would file the new request. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
