At that time it was considered that the sale of rape pornography might by now be unlawful in England and Wales as a final result of the Obscene Publications Act 1959, but the ruling in R v Peacock in January 2012 demonstrated that this was not the circumstance. Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 had currently criminalised possession of "serious pornography" but it did not explicitly specify depictions of rape.