Online business Adultshop.com today appealed against the failure of its legal bid to reduce the X rating given to an adult film.In November last year, Justice Peter Jacobson dismissed the online store's application for a judicial review of the Classification Review Board's decision to rank the film Viva Erotica as X18+.

Written by Nicolas Perpitch. Read the full story here

The traditional sterotype of a porn user is a dysfunctional middle aged man in a grubby raincoat, but that is being challenged by an unlikely newcomer to the scnene, according to a new book on pornography in Australia.

That newcomer says author Catharine Lumby, is likely to be a woman aged under 35 who lives int eh suburbs, votes for a progressive party like the Greens, is in a momogomous relationship with a man and earns slightly more than average.

From The Daily Telegraph. Read the full story Posted Wednesday, 27 February 2008 1:09 PM | 0 Comments

Predominantly male, Liberal as well as Labor voters, more likely to be religious and living in a monogomous relationship. This is not the target market for a new Holden sedan but your average Australian pornography user.

From The Australian. Read the full article here.

A Sunday Age investigation into Victoria's adult entertainment industry has found storefront shelves heavy with tens of thousands of X-rated films, which show real depictions of sex and are illegal to sell in Australia outside the ACT and Northern Territory.

More worrying though, is the widespread presence of unclassified films, which have not been submitted to the Classification Review Board and as such are illegal to sell anywhere in Australia.

Article from The Age. Read the full story Posted Monday, 18 February 2008 12:37 PM | 1 Comments

AdultShop.com has suffered another set back in its battle to sell explicit sex films across Australia after the Federal Court dismissed its appeal against the decision by the Office of Film and Literature Classification to give a film an X18+ rating.

 Read the full story here.

smh.com.au reporter, Adele Horin highlights that the unexpected findings of a survey of porn consumers. Nothing in 30 years of research about pornography has ever suggested it has a positive side. But that, says Alan McKee, is because the wrong people were being asked.

Read the full story here

Should X rated films be freely available to Australian adults?

Triple J's Steve Cannane presents a balanced interview with AdultShop.com CEO Malcolm Day and the Australian Family Association's Angela Conway.

View the podcast here

Article: Australian's porn industry challenges film ratings

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's porn industry began a court challenge to the country's film ratings on Thursday in a test case which family groups said could lead to explicit sex movies being sold openly in shops and petrol stations.

Pornographic movies can only be sold legally in two Australian territories, including the capital Canberra, and generated an estimated A$500 million ($393 million) last year, mainly through mail orders.

While it is legal to own or watch sexually-explicit movies at home an ... more

Caroline Overington, Senior Journalist for The Australian newspaper has established a blog that encourages readers to make comment on whether explicit erotic films should be made available to Australian adults?

Click here to read through some of the interesting comments that highlight just how much support there is for explicit erotic films to be made available to adults who wish to purchase them!

Last night, a Symposium organised by the University of Sydney and faciliated by ABC Movie Show host and anti-censorship campaigner Margaret Pomeranz, was held to openly discuss the topic of Sex, Censorship and Community Standards.

Today, AdultShop.com goes before the Federal Court to argue that films showing actual sex between consenting adults should be given a rating of R instead of X18+.

Click here to listen to the ABC News audio filemore

The Classification Review Board has agreed to conduct research into whether the so-called reasonable adult is offended by films that show actual sexual intercourse, writes Senior Journalist Caroline Overington for The Australian newspaper.

An interesting development given AdultShop.com's main argument in today's Federal Court challenge is that the Classification Review Board has not conducted any research into community standards, and if they were to would find that the reasonable adult is not offended by explicit erotic films.

The article can be accessed Posted Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:50 AM | 1 Comments

A court challenge over an X-rated film has reignited a debate over whether the ban on non-violent pornography should be lifted, writes Caroline Overington, Senior Journalist for The Australian newspaper.

The article can be accessed here.

An article written by Senior Journalist Caroline Overington, posted on the website News.com.au this morning, outlines the pending Federal Court challenge that will take place later this week.

The full story can be accessed here, along with some interestng readers' comments that indicate that Australian adults are fed up with censorship in Australia.

The nation's chief censor has admitted that trying to ban inappropriate content in films, computer games and pornography was a losing battle in the digital age.

The outgoing director of the Office of Film and Literature Classification, Des Clark, said the difficulty in restricting content across borders meant that consumers would increasingly have to decide for themselves what was appropriate.

"It seems to me that if you have this global stuff where you're not able to harness it, what comes into play - for instance with online gaming - is that you have protocols e ... more