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Comment by spiek | Hacker News Reader

I think you are missing the point. It seems that the author used 50 Shades of Grey to illustrate his "If everyone is a criminal, no one is" point. Literary merit aside, 50 Shades of Grey was a massive hit, and also pornographic, meaning that lots and lots of people read it, and lots and lots of people are now "criminals".

Also, in terms of freedom of expression how is 50 shades of grey any less significant than any of the other books he listed?

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"Literary merit aside, 50 Shades of Grey was a massive hit, and also pornographic, meaning that lots and lots of people read it,"

Which is probably something that the UK government does not want happening again.

"and lots and lots of people are now "criminals"."

No they're not, unless they decide to share copies of the novel online. I must have really missed it if there was something about retroactively enforcing laws.

There are legit concerns here, but fsog isn't one.

FSOG (nice acronym, it's a pain in the ass to type out) demonstrates that there a wide segment of the population that is willing and interested in reading material which the government is attempting to criminalize. I misspoke when I said they "are now" criminals, I should have said they will be criminals.

>Which is probably something that the UK government does not want happening again.

Also, this gets my hackles up. Why should they not want it to happen again, besides pointless and absurd moralizing? People have been writing smut for thousands of years. The first books printed with Gutenberg's printing press? Porn. What's different now?

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