by Tom Utley
A man in his early thirties is tortured to death by one of the most agonising deaths ever dreamt up by a sick mind. A woman of 19 is tied up and burned alive. Another has her breasts cut off before being rolled to death on a bed of red-hot coals..
Because of a technological breakthrough, all these images are freely available to children and adults all over the world. Indeed, they have been publicly accessible for many centuries, since the breakthrough I have in mind was the ancient discovery of long-lasting pigments that could be applied to wood, plaster or canvas.
All you need to do, if you want to see images of the sort I have described, is walk into any Christian church or gallery of Rennaissance art.
Before I'm excommunicated for blasphemy, let me make it absolutely clear that I do not regard devotional depictions of Christ's crucifixion or the martyrdoms of St Joan of Arc or St Agatha as in any way pornographic.
Their intention is not to cater for the repulsive tastes of perverts, but to bring home to us as vividly as possible the terrible suffering that Christians have had to endure for daring to spread the word.
I mention Christian iconography only to highlight the extreme difficulty ministers will encounter when they come to draft the new law they promised this week, under which offenders will face up to three years in prison if they look at 'violent and extreme' pornography on the internet.
How will the Governement's lawyers define exactly what they mean - and where will they draw the line?
For example, I can't think of anything much more extreme than skinning a man alive. Would Tony Blair have sent Michelangelo to prison for depicting the flaying of St Bartholomew, in hideous detail, in his Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel?
Well, of course he wouldn't. But can the Prime Minister explain the exact legal difference between Michelangelo's sublime masterpiece and a cleverly mocked-up film or still photograph on the internet, purporting to show a random young woman being flayed alive?
Is it just the medium that matters - fresco as opposed to photography or computer graphics (which incidentally get more realistic every week)? Is it the difference of intention between the artist and the pornographer - the one to inspire, the other to titillate? Or is it just the shere quality of Michelangelo, that sets aside the vileness of porn?
Whatever the answer, these will be mighty difficult questions for juries to decide. Of course, common sense will get them most of the way - but I predict very rich pickings for the lawyers all the same.
Images of the cricifixion raise other intriguing questions about the link between what we see and the way we behave. More than a billion people world-wide gaze every Sunday at often-graphic depictions of this revoltingly cruel way of torturing a man to death. Countless films have re-enacted it too.
So why, if those people are right who argue that violence on screen provokes copycat violence in real life, do we never hear about crazed Christians rushing out after church or the cinema to crucify their neighbours?
The answer is that the way we behave depends vastly more on the sort of people we are than on images we see.
My own children, I'm ashamed to admit, watch far too many violent films and play endless video games that involve blowing people's brains out or kicking old ladies in the head. I suppose I should do more to try to stop them - although it would be pretty fruitless if I tried, since they would only go to their friends' houses and watch the same films or play the same games there.
But I don't worry too much about it because I am absolutely, 100 per cent sure that none of my four sons - bad-tempered though they can sometimes be - would ever dream of knifing or shooting anyone in real life, any more than I would myself. Like the overwhelming majority of us, they are simply not that sort of person.
In the same way, you can be completely certain that none but the tiniest handful of perverts who get a kick out of watching violent rape scenes on the internet would ever commit rape or murder in real life.
One man who is said to have done that is Graham Coutts, who was convicted of murdering 31-year-old teacher Jane Longhurst, hours after looking at websites showing images of torture and extreme sexual violence. He won an appeal on technical grounds and is now facing a retrial.
It is chiefly because of this one case that the Government has promised to bring in the new law, after a ten-month campaign by the victim's mother, Liz Longhurst, whose petition attracted 50,000 signatures. Like everyone else, I have the most heart-felt sympathy for Mrs Longhurst and the deepest admiration for her determination that some good should come out of her daughter's awful death.
She is convinced that others like Jane are at risk from these vile pornographers, feeding on the basest appetites of the men who log on to their websites.
I strongly respect her view - and I fully understand the argument that if nobody looked at this muck, the market for it would disappear. And with the market gone, nobody would produce violent pornography any more, which would mean that nobody would suffer in the making of it.
But many things worry me about the proposed law. For a start, it may well be true that perverted killers like looking at unspeakable filth on the internet. But it doesn't necessarily turn them into killers.
For another, the great majority of films that purport to showmen and women being tortured and killed are performed by consenting adult actors and nobody actually suffers (except perhaps morally) in the making of them.
We have all heard about 'snuff movies' showing real deaths - but this new law will apply equally to pornography that relies on acting and special effects.
A third consideration is that this new law will utterly destroy the lives of many men, drawn to look at pornography by curiosity or sexual inadequacy, who pose no real physical threat to anybody.
But, worst of all, do we really need yet another new law, creating yet another new imprisonable criminal offence, at a time when the Government is setting thousands of violent men free to clear space in our prisons - men who certainly do pose an immediate physical threat to us all?
Aren't the police far enough stretched as it is, without giving them yet another excuse to sit in offices, watching hundreds of hours of pornography, instead of getting out on to the beat where they might protect the public?
The new law has New Labour written all over it. Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker knows that countless millions of us will heartily agree with him when he says he finds violent and extreme pornography'deeply abhorrent'. He knows that a great many will therefore approve when they see headlines proclaiming 'Governement cracks down on internet filth.'
So it is that, long after the headlines are forgotten, we will be saddled with yet another badly drafted law, to add to the 3000-plus new criminal offences already created under Labour.
It will be yet another law that nobody will be able to enforce properly, because we haven't enough room in our prisons. And yet another law that will do no obvious good, while giving the police yet another excuse to avoid doing their proper jobs.
Is that really such a good idea?
© Associated Newspapers Ltd 2006 .