The British High Court has been asked to decide whether adult videos and DVDs can be sold online by licensed sex shops, in a case involving two companies fined for such sales last year.
Interfact, Ltd. of Essex and Pabo, Ltd. of Birmingham, were convicted in a Liverpool court in April 2004 for offering adult videos for sale in their Internet catalogs, with the court judges holding the 1984 Video Recordings Act restricted sales to customers in brick-and-mortar sex shops and didn’t cover or allow online sales.
The companies are believed to have made this a test case, telling the High Court judges February 22 that both prosecutors and themselves agree adult materials can be sold only through licensed sex shops, and that because the purchases were packaged and paid for through and in their shops, that point of supply should mean no crime was committed.
But Liverpool officials argued that the point of supply was the place of delivery—which the businesses insisted was a service and not the source of business—and that thus the online sales were against the law.
Interfact had been fined for online sales involving four adult films including Bikers’ Gang Bang, while Pabo had been hit for selling Shane’s World and three other adult titles.
Interfact attorney David Pannick told the High Court judges that interpreting the 1984 law against Internet-based adult sales even by licensed sex shops would damage local economies in Britain “in favor of the economy in France or the Netherlands.
“We say that to prohibit mail order sales for videos which are accepted by the regulatory body to be appropriate for viewing by adults would breach Article 10 (the right to freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights,” he added.
