It will soon be prohibited to buy sex films with tailored content from Onlyfans profiles. A law amendment has now been passed in the Riksdag. However, several questions remain, many of them linked to historical, moral, and legal debates.
How has it been legally in Sweden?
It is not allowed to buy sex in Sweden. However, it is allowed to sell sex. The boundary between what constitutes a purchase and a sale in this context has been debated and changed legally over the centuries. The fact that buying is illegal is based on, greatly simplified, that the absolute majority of sex buyers are men and that the equally large, often vulnerable, majority of sex sellers are women.
Society, and law-making politicians, have through the law wanted to emphasize that it – generally speaking – is men who are perpetrators in this context.
What is changing?
The internet's progress has created a new dimension to many parts of daily life, including sex trade and the adjacent area of pornography. Whether pornography is a violation or voluntary sexual expression is a historically long debate, but with sites like Onlyfans, consumers of pornography have been able to order content in a different way than before. Specifically paying for content in the style of "I want you to do Y with X" will become punishable. However, one can still subscribe to a specific person's content and watch it, as long as the content is not tailored for a particular person.
Why is the change good?
Advocates point out that it will now be uniform and clear what applies in Sweden. What is illegal in the physical world will also be illegal in the digital. The digital will no longer be an "entry point" for prostitution.
It's about digitalized prostitution, where the boundaries between pornography and human trafficking are erased, but where exploitation and abuse have moved in, argued Sanna Backeskog (S) in the Riksdag when the law amendment was debated last week.
Why is the change bad, according to critics?
Criticism of the change comes from different quarters. Moral panic, say some. Others point out that those who now create content on, for example, Onlyfans will end up in a legal pinch. A relative who knows that their partner "sells sex" via Onlyfans could potentially be convicted of pimping.
Some critics also argue that the law risks becoming toothless since there is nothing to prevent a creator from asking their "fans" what they want to see and thus niching themselves on that type of content – which could be a way to circumvent the fact that it will be illegal to pay for "person X to do X".
What happens now?
The Riksdag has today voted through the law amendment, and it will come into force on July 1st this year. Exactly how the change will affect is difficult to predict. The Liberals' Martin Melin, himself a former police officer, raised just that question during the Riksdag's debate:
I see a challenge for the police in terms of detecting the crime and proving the crime. I have a bit of trouble seeing how it will work, but that's for the police and prosecutors to figure out in the future. I can only conclude that it will be a challenge.
