Richard Desmond, a British billionaire who was formerly the proprietor of adult television channels and wank mags, does not wish to be known as a pornographer. In fact, he apparently feels it is illegal to call him such and is demanding that Wikipedia cease doing so. Someone's even in there trying, so far without hap, to edit it out of his entry.
According to legal documents seen by the Guardian, Desmond says he cannot factually be described as a pornographer because that term applies only to individuals who publish illegal and obscene material. Desmond says the top-shelf magazines and television channels he owned for decades were instead in the legitimate "adult material" category distributed in high-street shops and on Sky. The former owner of the magazines Asian Babes and Readers' Wives, who owned adult outlets from the 1980s until 2016, has now hired lawyers to demand Wikipedia permanently deletes any mentions of the word "pornographer" from his biography.
There's funny stuff in there from his lawyers indicating how mad he is that people keep reverting his edit. The edit in question (there are a number of relevant ones) appears to change "pornographer" to "philanthropist".
In the U.S., calling him a pornographer would, I suppose, be a protected opinion rather than a statement of fact. And even as the latter, the insistence that "pornography" refers exclusively to legally obscene material seems very optimistic. But the U.K.'s loopy-doo libel law is famously plaintiff-friendly, so the chill there runs colder when rich mens' lawyers send mail. Taking on Wikipedia, though? Instant full-scale Streisand Effect for the hitherto unknown British billionaire whose I Am Not A Pornographer letter is raising questions already answered by the letter.
