Read it and weep people.

Ofcom, the same people who feel that forcing businesses to provide compulsory call price announcements before making 084/7 calls or that imposing substantial direct fines on large businesses like BT who deliberately went on calling 0845 and 0870 Lo-Call and National Rate for over two years after it was no longer the case for millions of customers would be a disproportionate intervention in the market, have just hit pay Sky platform encrypted sex channel XPlicitXXX a swingeing £30,000.  Their offence believe it or not was showing images of a naked woman in a program helpfully entitled "Rubber Ron" in which she penetrates herself with a dildo for 22 minutes in a way that Ofcom considers to be too sexually explicit to be transmitted, even late at night and even on a Pay encrypted sex channel clearly named and numbered as such, even though such material is freely available for adults to buy as R18 videos at licensed sex shops or indeed can be easily found and watched straight away free of either charge or any form of age verification at a website such as www.xnxx.com.

See www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/obb/ocsc_adjud/xplicitxxx.pdf

It seems this company had previously accidentally transmitted soft core sex videos in unencrypted form free of charge after the soft core (ie no pentration or close up shots) Freeview period on their channel had ended and had on that occasion been let off with a ticking off by Ofcom but on this occasion all they did was actually show their customers the material they no doubt thought and hoped that they might be going to get when they signed up for the channel in the first place in fully encrypted form available only to subscribers to the channel. And yet incredibly Ofcom's moral prurience here involves not objecting to viewers seeing the full insertion of the male organ in the female orificie or the on screen eruption of the contents of the fully extended male organ but merely a female playing with her own orifice with an inanimate object.  Yet all history on obscene publication prosecutions in the UK courts before the interpretation of UK law changed to allow hard core sex videos to be sold in UK sex shops 5 or 6 years ago always considered that the public demonstration of acts with the fully extended male member were offensive whereas videos involving the female organ in whatever form were usually not.

Just how can Ofcom allow millions of UK phone customers a week to be ripped off for hidden premium rate call charges that are not fully revealed or announced in advance contrary to the terms of the EU Misleading Advertising Directive and yet feel it is right and proper for it to impose a large fine on a minor pay sex tv channel for showing material that is readily available on the internet and in any UK licensed sex shop.

Surely there is something wrong somewhere in Ofcom's ideas of what does and does not constitute a disproportionate intervention in the operation of the marketplace.

mayflower wrote on Dec 15^th, 2006 at 10:30am:


I never watched the program in question.  I merely read the Ofcom press release they emailed me the link for (I'm on their Update mailing lists) telling me they were fining this channel a whopping £30,000 for letting viewers of an encrypted sex channel see what they had clearly hoped they might see when they signed up for it in the first place.

My point was why aren't 084/7 users who still use the terms Local/National rate also being fined £30,000 each time by Ofcom.  Ofcom and the Information Commissioner never fine any telecoms scammer preferring instead just to send a polite letter to them.

Most of the public are a lot more concerned about these genuine telecoms scams than a pay porn tv channel showing proper hard core porn and fining TalkTalk and the other abusers who make these disgraceful claims about 084/7u numbers would stop their scamming overnight.

From the lack of replies to this thread I am beginning to wonder if my fellow forum regulars are all male anoraks who feel inhibibited from discussing sexual matters.  The fact of the matter is that that Ofcom have acted wholly disproportionately against the nature of the offence by the sex tv channel with this fine and were not protecting the interests of the UK citizen consumer here  (and therefore acting against the terms of the Communications Act 2003) but are repeatedly failing to act proportionately against repeated major telecoms scams was the point of my post.

Shiggaddi wrote on Dec 15^th, 2006 at 5:33pm:


I imagine that the rival pay porn channels on Sky pay for a member of their staff to have a sub to and record the output of the opposition's channels (perhaps even using a Tivo) in case one of them is showing stuff that would give them a commercial advantage.  Obviously no genuine subscriber to this channel would have made this complaint - they might possibly have sent a letter of congratulation instead.

Ofcom always seem to take even one business to business complaint very seriously but totally ignores 1,000 complaints from the public.  This despite the fact that their principal duty is supposed to be the protection of the interests of the UK citizen consumer.

Perhaps the complainant is someone who made a big donation to Labour party funds and owns a rival Sky porn channel or two?

Shiggaddi wrote on Dec 15^th, 2006 at 6:25pm:


MBNA or Nationwide building society branches or John Lewis stores or most Toyota car dealerships have no reason to complain to Ofcom about their competitors using a more expensive number than they do for calls because they know they would lose a current commercial marketing advantage by also encouraging their competitors to adopt numbers which are friendly to price sensitive and good quality customer service sensitive customers.  In essence Dixons, Sky, Comet etc rely on thriving on the stupidity and apathy of lazy customers who just rely on calling the most obvious brand names thrust down their throat on the nearest high street while John Lewis, MBNA etc all pitch for the business of more intelligent price sensitive customers.

However if of course I suppose you believe that 084/7 number users don't lose any business due to using the numbers but their more ethical competitors do incur extra costs by doing the right thing without gaining any extra customers as a result then they would have a reason to file a complaint with Ofcom.

Also I'm not sure if Ofcom would take a complaint from a retail store group seriously.  It mainly seems to be complaints from telecoms and broadcasting companies where many former Ofcom employees worked and who also provide most of Ofcom's income and salaries that Ofcom seem to be most reactive to and most likely to investigate complaints from.