6 Countries That Have Screwed-Up Laws You Never Knew About

4 The UK Is Terrified Of Porn

The British are notorious sticklers for the rules. For everything, there is a proper way to do it -- how to address the queen, how to add cream to scones, how to nut a chav in the bollocks, and so forth. And now there's also a right way and a wrong way to watch porn, thanks to the Digital Economy Bill of 2017.

3 In Japan, Racism Is Basically Legal

In 2015, a record 15 million people visited Japan to see what kind of culture could birth both samurai and Hello Kitty. That's impressive, especially for a place that openly hates foreigners.

Despite having a great tourist industry and a national birth rate lower than a panda enclosure, Japan has the kind of anti-immigration monoculture policies that would make any Western fascist orange with envy. Tattoos are associated with criminals, so places like hot springs often have a policy banning people with ink. However, that also includes foreigners with dumb Simpsons tattoos -- or worse, those who have them for religious reasons.

But that's almost nothing compared to the many other Japanese businesses which utilize actual segregation, barring non-Japanese from entering their restaurants, shops, and hotels. All of which is perfectly legal. And because they're such a polite culture, they even put the signs up in English, so it's easy for foreign devils to know where they're not welcome.

2 In Italy, Fascist Mobs Are Still In Vogue

While other former Axis powers have managed to leave their fascist pasts mostly behind them (looking at you, Japan), it seems that Italy wants to start rallying like it's 1939 again. Acquiescing to a cherished racist tradition that dates back to Mussolini's Blackshirts, Italy officially legalized vigilante organizations in 2009. Today, Italian mobs roam the streets of most big cities, carefully and legally stalking immigrants and Roma, harassing and even attacking them for the slightest thing. As a result, in the five years after the law was passed, hate crimes against non-ethnic Italians skyrocketed.

Despite the rise in anti-immigration hate crimes, the government sees no problem with these roaming gangs of angry xenophobes, possibly for fear they'll lose the coveted truncheon-wielding voter bloc. In fact, the government seems keen on avoiding any comparison of their new vigilante groups with the WWII ones, saying the thought of Blackshirts returning "disgusts" them. On an unrelated note, they would really like it if everyone could overlook the Italian National Guard, one of the biggest sanctioned vigilante groups in Italy, with their snazzy uniform of "khaki shirts, black ties and black armbands bearing a red symbol."

1 In Russia, First-Time Domestic Abusers Get A Pass

In 1963, Russia sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space. Terror, extreme pressure, dying of asphyxiation ... Tereshkova escaped all those things by fleeing Russian soil. But it isn't the '60s anymore -- Russian women no longer go to space, and it's also no longer illegal to beat them or their kids.

In 2018, the Russian government finally responded to the country's long-running domestic violence problem, one that on average kills a woman every 40 minutes (around 14,000 per year). Unfortunately, that response was to give abusive husbands a Get Out of Jail Free Card. According to an amended law, as long as an abused woman or child isn't battered to point of hospitalization (the threshold for abuse only starts at broken bones), a first-time offender will not face any jail time. For second-time offenders, the punishment is a fine as low as 5 rubles (80 cents American), meaning a man could beat his wife within an inch of consciousness twice and only have to pay whatever loose change he fishes out of the couch cushions.

Under the new "slapping law," if a man refuses to pay the fine, the court will take it from his joint account, meaning that women often have to pay for their own beatings. Even women who fled to shelters were tracked down by the courts in order to force them to pay their abusive husbands' fines. Suddenly, enlisting as a mail-order bride to be sold off to some awkward schlub from Vermont seems like a logical and reasonable choice.