Court allows hard-core porn sale

A court in London has ruled that licensed sex shops can sell hard-core pornographic videos.

The court refused an appeal by the British Board of Film Classification against a decision by its own appeals committee to allow the sale of seven explicit films. The judge ruled that the risk of children seeing the videos was insignificant, and the committee's decision was reasonable. The Board decided for the first time two years ago to allow licensed sex shops to sell videos showing explicit sexual intercourse.

But police later complained that some videos on sale were so explicit that they would break the criminal law, and the Home Secretary Jack Straw urged the Board to stop their sale.

The BBC media correspondent says the court's decision leaves the British government's policy on hard-core pornograpy in a mess.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service