Contribute to a Caning!

In December, a law came into effect in the UK which made the production of spanking videos, along with a variety of other kinds of porn, illegal. There was a lot of public outcry at the time, and spankos from all over the world offered their emotional support to the UK based producers. People signed petitions. People went to protests.

Then, eventually, things slowed down and, as a community, we generally stopped talking about this. That’s what happens with all political issues: very rarely do we stop actively talking about them because something gets fixed. We stop talking about them because we’ve run out of momentum, or things to say, or ideas of how to get things fixed. Continuing to talk about it, then, makes us feel hopeless. A much worse a reason why we stop talking about things is because we get used to them. We accept that this is simply the way things are. We stop thinking about it.

Unless, of course, you can’t stop thinking about it because it directly affects you. For the average spanko, the law change made us angry or uncomfortable. But for UK based spanking and fetish producers, it changed everything. I don’t know all the producers, and not all of them share what’s going on in their lives online, but here’s a recap of the information that I have right now (if you have more information than I do, please feel free to chime in in the comments section!):

• My partner, Paul Kennedy, who founded Northern Spanking, now legally doesn’t own any of it: I do. All aspects of the business have been transferred to my name, and our servers have been moved to the US. Despite these changes, the site continues to operate as normal. I’ve been getting more involved in production over the past year or so, anyway, so that hasn’t been a change. It’s heart breaking to me that Paul can’t own the site that he’s been nurturing since I was just a high school girl, but I’m happy that our situation has created a safe and stable way to preserve the site and keep Paul from being at risk of going to jail. It has always been our intention for Paul to relocate to the US since we started dating, and doing that provides an extra level of security, since we don’t know yet how far reaching the long arm of the law is on this issue.
• John Osborne, who created Triple A Spanking and POV Spanking, has come up with a similar arrangement with his US based partner, Sarah Gregory. His sites are now owned and operated in the US.  John received an email from ATVOD warning him that his content is now against the law, but as far as I know, no action was taken due to the relocation of the site to the US.
• Michael Stamp, who founded Bars and Stripes has stopped producing content and has sold his site. Bars and Stripes is now owned by the family of sites that does Spanked in Uniform and Real Life Spankings, which is based in Holland and therefore not subject to the ATVOD regulations.
• Sarah Bright and Mr. Stern of Spanking Sarah, English Spankers and other similar sites announced on a blog that they intend to move themselves and their production company to Spain, relocating their entire family to avoid prosecution.
• Hywel Philips of Restrained Elegance has his company based in the US, but is remaining in the UK and taking the side of resistance.
• Pandora Blake, creator of Dreams of Spanking is keeping her site a UK based company and production studio, and Pandora is focusing on activism against the censorship, along with…
• Nimue Allen, owner of Nimue’s World, who is also keeping her company and site in the UK and doing extremely important activist work.

There are other producers in the UK, but I don’t have any updates on how they’re dealing with this issue. If you know any, please add them in the comment section!

Nimue and Pandora announced a little while ago that they’re doing a fundraiser for Backlash UK, an organization that, among other things, provides legal aid for producers affected by the new ATVOD law. The fundraiser started off with a goal of 500 Pounds. For each ten pound donation, one of the two would receive one cane stroke, with a maximum of 50 strokes being received per girl. When the fundraising reached 1000 pounds, the maximum amount of strokes set to be received, Rosie Bottomley stepped up to take the next 50 strokes. When THAT goal was surpassed, Amelia Jane Rutherford agreed to take an additional 25 strokes. This goal has also been passed now.

So who do the additional cane strokes fall to? Well, they fall to me, of course.

I had the rare chance to have a skype chat with Pandora this afternoon. Because we’re both always keeping busy (her especially!) and we’re 8 hours of timezones apart, we almost never get a chance to make our schedules line up, so it was wonderful that we did. When we talked today, she told me everything that was going on with the fundraiser and explained that they had raised more funds than they had models to take the cane strokes, I was both overjoyed with their success and happy to help out. I’m an American, but this law has changed my life, too, and technically speaking, I’m a producer of a traditionally UK based site now. Besides, British spanking pornography means an awful lot to me. I was happy to put my butt on the line, quite literally!

So, everyone, click here to donate to Pandora’s fundraiser! You can donate no matter where you are located in the world. Ten pounds is about fifteen US dollars, and each 15 dollar donation adds a cane stroke for me! The caning will be filmed after Paul returns to the US, and the video including Pandora, Nimue, Rosie, Amelia and I all getting caned (although not at the same time and place) will be made available to everyone for free! Really, who DOESN’T want to see me get fifty cane strokes for a good cause? That’s an awful lot! So, please donate!

When you think about it, your donation doesn’t just ensure that I’ll be getting an additional cane stroke: it helps to provide countless more cane strokes in the future by helping to make sure that British spanking pornography is able to continue on in the world. More writing on this topic coming tomorrow, but I was kind of wrestling with blogger for a couple of days, so I got behind on my posting and now that I’m participating in this fund raiser, I want to get the word out before it’s too late!