A legal loophole means that numerous prosecutions against people selling 12, 15 and 18 rated DVDs to children who are under that age, as well as those selling hardcore pornography outside sex shops, have had to be thrown out of court. This stems from the fact that when The Video Recordings Act was passed in 1984, the government at the time didn’t notify the European Commission about the law. Although previous convictions under the act won’t be affected by this realisation, now that the error has come to life the government has told the UK film and DVD industry that the act is ‘no longer enforceable’.
The Video Recordings Act was brought in at the height of the video nasties scare in the 1980s, and made it illegal to sell video recorded works that hadn’t been certified by the BBFC, and also allowed prosecution if people sold age-restricted videos (or now DVDs and Blu-ray) to people under that age. Despite the fact the law is no unenforcable, retailers have agreed to voluntarily abide by the act until the government can pass the law again, which could take up to three months.
According to the BBC, 87 people were convicted under the act in 2007, although presumably it’s going to be a lot lower than that this year. The problem came to light during work on the UK government’s Digital Britain project.
Although we wouldn’t recommend doing it, it does mean that at the moment, there’s no legal recourse against anyone selling age restricted discs or hardcore pornography to whoever they want, as long as the discs themselves are legal (e.g not pirated).