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From: idc@cs.hw.ac.uk (Ian Crorie)
Newsgroups: news.misc,rec.mag
Subject: Re: Playboy Censored in England (was: News slanted by censorship?)
Message-ID: <299@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk>
Date: 30 Jun 88 15:59:24 GMT
References: <386@blic.BLI.COM> <113@dcs.UUCP> <3939@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> <118@dcs.UUCP> <921@flatline.UUCP> <519@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: idc@cs.hw.ac.uk (Ian Crorie)
Organization: Computer Science, Heriot-Watt U., Scotland
Lines: 28

In article <519@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk> sheridan@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk writes:

..stuff deleted..
  >
  >What's after the centerfold in the July issue of Playboy?  All the copies in
  >England have been censored.
  >

I read in a diary column in one of the Sunday papers (I think) that the
reason for the some-pages-removed-for-legal-reasons message on the cover
was the following:

In the American edition there was a humorous article about an imaginary
U.S. golfer including some uncomplimentary remarks about him.    When
the U.K. lawyers retained by whoever publishes Playboy in the U.K. read
this they completely missed the point of the piece and, thinking that this
was a *real* person, advised that the article was potentially libellous.
So it was removed.

Maybe the lawyers just skimmed over the articles and concentrated on
the pictures.    ;-)

  >
  >                ..... _Please_ be cryptic in your response, if you
  >post, otherwise sysops could go to jail.
  >

Ok officer, it's a fair cop, but USENET is to blame.