Pornography barons hoping for Kwasniewski veto
After parliament passed vague and perhaps unenforceable anti-pornography legislation last week, pornographers are preparing to get around the ban before it is even clear whether the president will sign it.
The Sejm had wanted to define pornography so as to discourage only hard-core pornographers and distributors. But the Senate rejected the lower house's narrow definition of pornography as display of genitals during sexual intercourse and voted to ban all pornography. Ultimately, following debate on the futility of a law without a definition, Sejm acceded to the will of the upper house. It will now be up to President Aleksander Kwasniewski to sign or block the legislation. Kwasniewski has four weeks to make up his mind. Existing law prohibits only "hard-core" pornography in which children, animals or violence are shown.
While the Sejm's decision predictably created a stir in the porn underworld, porn barons disagreed on whether the law would ruin their businesses or merely complicate their lives. "The Sejm accepted an unenforceable law, which (will become) pure fiction," said Krzysztof Garwatowski, spokesman for Pink Press, which generates pornographic movies and 11 hard-core magazines. Parliament's failure to define pornography, he said, will leave his company's activities intact.
"It's a return to the law before 1998 when most of our titles were already published," Garwatowski said. Until 1998 all pornography was officially banned, but "no prosecutor managed to prove that we had committed a crime. So, we are not going to close down our company or change the profile of our publications," he said. On the contrary, "In order to be prepared for a possible trial we asked court experts for their opinions on what criteria would be used to accuse someone of producing or distributing pornography."
Porn barons said in fact that they count on Polish courts' continuing their record of failure to enforce the law where pornography is concerned. In 1997 with pornography prominent in public places only five persons were prosecuted, according to the Justice Ministry. Today, some porn barons seem to regard themselves as, in effect, immune to legal restrictions.
But while Garwatowski sounded very confident, other pornographers were more nervous. "I am a broken man," said Pawel Siarkiewicz, owner of the International Fun Center (IFC), one of the leading domestic distributors of sex products. "Most sex shops will collapse as they live on sales of hard-core porn cassettes and publications." Porn publications and videos account for 30% of turnover on sex products, he said. The Polish pornography industry operates some 200 sex shops and 30 magazines, Siarkiewicz said.
Surprisingly, a deputy of Solidarity Election Action (AWS), which supported the ban en bloc, said sex shops may survive as the law doesn't prohibit their existence. "I can imagine a situation wherein they don't sell pure pornography," said Antoni Szymanski. "What's important is that, thanks to the new law, pornographic material won't be as easily available as it is now, at almost any fuel station, for instance."
Siarkiewicz, one of the more apprehensive porn merchants, said the new law is absurd because he claims 25% of Poles buy hard pornography. "It's as if you want to prosecute 10 million people in this country," he said. "Besides, we should not talk about a total ban but discreet ways of selling pornography so that juveniles won't have easy access to it."
But the more restrictive legislation going to Kwasniewski's desk meets Polish society's expectations, said AWS' Szymanski. "The Sejm got 300,000 letters supporting plans to limit the reach of pornography in Poland," he said. "And no letters defended the current law. More and more people demand that violence and pornography should be limited." In a 1997 survey by the Public Opinion Survey Center, over 50% of respondents said Polish pornographers were not sufficiently prosecuted.
Some West European countries, which have been very liberal about pornography, are also considering reducing its prevalence, Szymanski said, mentioning France and Sweden. In the latter, the culture minister is considering a total ban on broadcasting pornography on commercial TV channels.
The last resort for Siarkiewicz and other porn barons is President Kwasniewski. "But, deep inside I think he will sign the bill as politics doesn't count its victims," he said. Szymanski agreed, saying that Kwasniewski would have to carefully consider the consequences before vetoing the bill. "I think that the president will take into account public expectations, particularly before presidential elections," Szymanski said.
