Thursday, April 17, 2014



Should Revenge Porn Be a Crime?

Romantic breakups are never fun — but add revenge porn to the mix and things can get downright cruel. Revenge porn is defined as the dissemination of sexually explicit images of an ex-lover without their permission. It can often be emotionally devastating and have lasting effects on a person's reputation and employability.

Virginia, Utah, and Idaho have all enacted legislation this year criminalizing revenge porn; they join New Jersey and California which were the first states to do so. Nineteen other states have proposed similar legislation.

While most people sympathize with the victims, some fear criminalizing this behavior will have dire consequences on constitutionally protected free speech.

"The Supreme Court's position, rightly, is that all speech is by default protected by the First Amendment," says Lee Rowland of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Revenge porn, according to Rowland, is better handled under civil law. In most states, civil laws are already on the books that make it unlawful to maliciously cause emotional distress, intentionally invade someone's privacy, or participate in extortion and harassment. Expanding civil laws to include revenge porn where they don't, Rowland says, is a better solution than criminalizing it.

SOURCE

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When left in the civil realm the victim will often be required to pay a lawyer to take the case because the perpetrator has no money or assets to be seized. Moving it to the criminal realm allows the DAs office to cover the cost of prosecution put can introduce a political element to the case.

There are reasons why making it criminal will be better, the question is whether it will be worth the cost to the public.

Anonymous said...

Maybe people should not send naked pictures of themselves to anyone or let others take naked pictures of them.

Stan B said...

Anon 5:13 AM : WTF are YOU smoking? ;-)