Video Recordings Act 1984

The Video Recordings Act 1984 required every videogram supplied commercially in the UK to carry a classification from a designated authority, which in practice meant the BBFC.

It closed the gap that had caused the whole episode: before it, videotape was the only distribution format in Britain with no licensing requirement at all.

Once every tape was classified there was nothing left to prosecute, and the DPP list became a historical document within about a year.

Its longer effect was that the BBFC spent two decades cutting horror on video considerably harder than the same films for cinema, on the reasoning that a tape can be paused, rewound and watched by children. That policy relaxed from the late 1990s.

The Act was technically unenforceable between 1984 and 2010: the government never notified it to the European Commission as the Technical Standards Directive required. It was re-enacted in 2010 to fix this.

What the Act says

The Act received royal assent on 12 July 1984, and the BBFC was designated as the classifying authority in 1985. The sections that matter to most readers:

• Section 4 lets the Secretary of State designate an authority to decide whether video works are suitable for a classification certificate, with special regard to the likelihood of them being watched at home.
• Section 7 sets out what a certificate must say: one of three things: that the work is suitable for general viewing, that it is suitable only for viewers over a stated age, no higher than eighteen, or (for R18) that it may be supplied only in a licensed sex shop.
• Section 9 makes it an offence to supply, or offer to supply, a video recording of a work that has no classification certificate. It is a defence to show you reasonably believed the work was exempt or already certified.
• Section 10 covers possessing an unclassified recording for the purpose of supplying it.

A section 9 offence is punishable by up to two years in prison or a fine on indictment, and by up to six months, a fine (unlimited in England and Wales since 2015), or both on summary conviction (section 9 has the current text).

Cinema is a different system. BBFC cinema certificates are advisory and local councils hold the licensing power. Video is statute.

The 2010 fix

The 1984 Act was repealed and revived, in the same stroke, by the Video Recordings Act 2010, which took effect on 21 January 2010. The classification regime did not change.

What it did to the nasties

Once every tape needed a certificate, the titles on the DPP's list had to be classified, and for many of them that meant cuts. Several waited decades. The Evil Dead passed 18 uncut in 2000; the full story for each title is on the list. For the panic that produced the Act, read the video nasties panic, 1982 to 1984, and for the classifier, see BBFC.