Thai police arrested a popular OnlyFans content creator known as Kainaoa and her partner on Tuesday. The pair were charged with producing and distributing pornographic content online, according to a Facebook post published by the country’s Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB). If convicted, the couple is subject to a maximum of three years in prison and up to BHT 60,000 (USD 1,787) in fines.
Senior police officials warned over the weekend that individuals who create “obscene” videos and photos in exchange for financial compensation in the form of membership fees on websites like OnlyFans are breaching Thailand’s pornography laws, per local media outlet Khaosod English.
The development takes place nearly one month after OnlyFans, a subscription service platform that is synonymous with adult content, walked back a ban on posts containing “sexually explicit conduct” on August 25. “We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change,” the company said in a tweet.
Thai police spokesperson Siriwat Deepor told the press on Monday that Kainaoa and her partner could also be charged under the Computer Crime Act, a law that is “tightening the chokehold on online expression” in the country, as rights groups describe it.
Section 287 of Thailand’s Penal Code prohibits the trade, distribution, exhibition, production, and possession of pornographic materials, but legal professionals say the law fails to define “obscenity.” The matter is particularly pertinent in the context of shifting social attitudes and the ease of cultivating an online presence by generating personal content.
“This issue is left to prosecutors and courts to determine. The lack of clear standards of obscenity can hinder the efficiency of suppressing pornography in general and not only on the internet,” said Alexander Shytov, assistant professor at Chiang Mai University’s law school in a blogpost for Thailand Law Forum.
“Thailand itself has experienced a dramatic change in sexual culture. What was shameful in the past is considered by many young people as a common and normal thing of today’s life. In other words, in the context of the internet, which does not know national borders, the parochial standards of decency among Thai judiciary turn [out] to be of little use,” Shytov wrote in the post.
The arrest has fomented public anger against the police. On Twitter, Kainaoa’s screen name has been tweeted as a hashtag more than 445,000 times as of publication.
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