Sweden Bans Custom Content as Prostitution, Are More Countries to Follow?

Sweden recently initiated legislation banning custom pornography as prostitution, extending to the Internet legislation that already banned paying for sex in person. “Everything that buyers can influence is not allowed to be bought,” Cina Podenphant, a content creator, told The Sunday Times. “You can go in and buy what is there, pre-recorded material and pictures. You can go in and look at that.” But no more. In 1999, Sweden passed the Sex Purchase Act, making it illegal to buy sex but not to sell it. Other countries followed suit, to protect women from prosecution and target men who pay for sex. In the recent amendment to Swedish

law, advocates believe they are merely doing the same thing: that buying sex, even remotely, is a form of exploitation; and selling it, even in the virtual world, is a form of prostitution.

The legislation introduced this month goes right to the heart of OnlyFans, and other paid content platforms, which allow users, for a fee, to request the exact pornography they want from the performer they desire. Nina Larsson, minister of gender equality, said the sex industry was “moving online and into the digital world.” She added: “The legislation needs to follow suit.”

Since the legislation was introduced in Sweden, OnlyFans appears to have started to withdraw from the country, removing chat services. “Our followers cannot contact us in any way,” said one content creator in Sweden. “It is still a very big thing to be able to write to your followers and create some kind of contact with them.” The question on creators' minds now is enforcement. How will the government differentiate between custom and pre-recorded content? According to Larsson, “It is the law enforcement authorities, the police and the judiciary that, now that the legislation is in place, will develop methods to be able to apply this legislation."