Virgin Killer: ban this image now!

You can find the Scorpions' Virgin Killer image of a naked girl that has been causing all the fuss 32 years after it appeared as an album cover by doing a simple google search, if you're so inclined. You should even be able to access it on the Scorpions' Wikipedia page again without any problems now that the Internet Watch Foundation has lifted its ban on the page, which was adhered to by most big UK internet service providers.

Unfortunately no one is currently proposing a ban on the image that replaced that of the girl, which I'm sure you'll agree is a disturbing picture of 1970s' rock idols at the peak of their perverted powers, with no redeeming 'artistic' context of any description. It's enough to make you thank The X-Factor for giving us the straightforward kiddie-porn of Eoghan and Diana and, gawd help us, JL 'it's just like the Beatles' S.

Ban the Board of Film Censors

I see the hackers have got at the British Board of Film Classification's paid-for google listing. They've done so, though, in a year that is probably going to see the smallest number of cuts made to films screened in the UK since records began. Only one film (out of 352 so far) has been cut on the BBFC's say-so in 2008. That's down from 240, more than a third of the total, in 1974, when cinema soft porn was in its heyday, and compares with between five and 20 per year over the past decade.

So which film do you suppose got the chop? Zombie Strippers maybe or El Bano de Papa (The Pope's Toilet)? Nothing so exciting: rather, it was Peter Cattaneo's The Rocker, and then only because the distributor wanted it to get a 12A certificate. Any film censorship these days takes place long before a film gets to the BBFC.