Are purveyors of niche pornography, outside of the mainstream, being unduly targeted by UK TV on-demand regulator Atvod? One femdom site owner believes the answer is a resounding yes

“I believe that there is some kind of hunt going on at the moment,” Itziar Urrutia tells Wired.co.uk.

Urrutia operates an adult fetish site that is less blondes in schoolgirl skirts, and more whips, chains and latex. She is a visual performance artist, and her persona du jour is that of the jail keeper at the Urban Chick Supremacy Cell, “a fictional femdom (female dominance) terror cell that seeks to chase smug city boys and other male vermin and destroy patriarchy”. Since June 2013, however, the tables have somewhat turned and Urrutia has found herself the hunted party.

It was then she received a letter telling her she had breached rules 1, 4 and 11 of TV on-demand regulator Atvod’s very minimalistic list of rules (there are 13, and 9 are administrative). One and four relate to Atvod’s categorisation of her ten hours of video, published behind a membership paywall, as a TV-like service akin to 4OD — which means Atvod gets to charge a regulatory fee. Rule 11, accuses Urrutia of hosting “material which might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of persons under the age of eighteen”, something that is outlawed unless under age verification controls, according to the EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which only the UK seems to have concluded relates to all material of an R18 nature.

“There isn’t tolerance for porn in this country,” Jerry Barnett, founder of Sex & Censorship, tells Wired.co.uk. This is where we come to the chase.

 Read more about the targeting of niche pornographers by UK regulators…