What is pornography?

A pornographic audio-visual programme, often also referred to as adult entertainment, can be defined for example as a description where people are handled only as sexual beings. “A pornographic movie is an action movie where only the sexual organs function.”

Pornography is often divided into two different categories by the manner of presentation

1. soft-core pornography, where sexual acts are simulated, inexplicit or cut or limited so that the spectator does not know whether an actual intercourse takes place or not and
2. hard-core pornography depicting real sexual acts in close-ups.

Most of pornographic audio-visual programmes are hard-core pornography.

In Finland it is legal to exhibit and distribute to people who are at least 18 years old pornographic audio-visual programmes where the participants are voluntary adults capable to defending themselves and which do not depict children, bestiality or violence in a sexually obscene manner.