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While responses to non-consensual intimate image distribution (NCIID) often highlight criminal law remedies, little is known about how young people are choosing to respond to this act and whether they perceive legal intervention as a useful tool. Drawing from interviews with 10 teenagers and survey responses from 81 adult supporters, we provide insight into how young people perceive the supports available to them for responding to NCIID. We find young people may avoid seeking support from both the criminal justice system and adults in general due to fears of adult overreaction, victim blaming and shaming, and self/peer criminalization.

Women endure the most severe and sustained forms of harassment on the internet. In response, activists around the world are mobilizing against conduct that endangers women online. At a time when fe...

Media, police, and educational responses to nonconsensual pornography (i.e. ‘revenge porn’) have been critiqued for relying on sex negative beliefs that result in victims of this act being blamed and shamed for their own victimisation. In this article I analyse judicial discourse in nonconsensual pornography case law to assess the extent to which sex negativity is embedded in legal responses. I find that, while overt victim blaming and shaming is not present in the judicial discourse, subtle forms of sex negativity are expressed in a minority of cases through references to consensual youth image sharing as inappropriate and through the framing of reputational harms. I argue that it is essential for legal responses to not only avoid sex negative narratives (as most currently do) but to actively reveal and counter the sex negative beliefs that underlie many of the harms associated with nonconsensual pornography.

Online risks and harms, including cyber-bullying, trolling, revenge porn and digital harassment, are an everyday reality in many young people’s lives. Educators are increasingly being called upon t...

Background In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), colloquially known as “revenge pornography.” However, the significant growth in the body of literature on the legal perspectives on IBSA, and the media coverage of high profile cases have not been equally met with appreciable victimization studies. Meanwhile, the need for a victim-centered approach in studying IBSA in Nigeria is underscored by the pervasiveness and normalization of sexual violence as a result of societal attitudes about gender and sexuality in the country. Therefore, this study explored the social and psychological implications of IBSA victimization. Methods Using qualitative methods, 27 adult women whose sexual images have been non-consensually shared publicly through online channels were purposively selected and interviewed for the study, between September 2019 and April 2020, and a thematic analysis of the participants’ narratives carried out. Results Victims of IBSA were found to be subjected to higher social condemnation, stigmatization, and isolation based on greater attribution of blames to them by their social network. Evidences of institutional re-victimization were documented. Victims also reported self-blame, paranoia, anger, guilt, depression, suicidal ideation and attempt in dealing with the abuse, secondary victimization, and social isolation. Conclusion IBSA victims are faced with peculiar social and psychological consequences which separate them from victims of other forms of sexual abuse. The study suggests a review of appropriate laws and social policies to prevent IBSA, deploy more victim support services and perpetrator programs, and protect victims from secondary victimization.

Beyond ‘scandals’ and the public testimonies of victim-survivors, surprisingly little is known about the nature and extent of the harms of ‘image-based sexual abuse’, a term that includes all non-consensual taking and/or sharing of nude or sexual images. Accordingly, this article examines the findings from the first cross-national qualitative study on this issue, drawing on interviews with 75 victim-survivors of image-based sexual abuse in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We adopt a feminist phenomenological approach that permits more nuanced and holistic understandings of victim-survivors’ experiences, moving beyond medicalised, trauma-based accounts of harm. Our analysis develops five interconnected accounts of the harms experienced, that we have termed social rupture, constancy, existential threat, isolation and constrained liberty. Our findings shed new light on the nature and significance of the harms of image-based sexual abuse that emphasises the need for more comprehensive and effective responses to these abuses.

‘Revenge pornography’ is a concept which embraces a broad spectrum of the non-consensual distribution of private sexual images. Acknowledging the harms that arise from this practice and the human rights implications of ‘revenge pornography’, this paper focuses on the difficulty of removing those images from the Internet. It considers the legal vehicles which can be employed to force websites and third-party operators to remove private sexual images, including privacy law and copyright notice and takedown systems. It concludes that the piecemeal approach to image removal is insufficient, and that a more cohesive and appropriate approach to image removal is required to ensure that victim-survivors’ rights to private and family life are properly protected.

Based on US and British regulations in force, this article offers an overview of legislation of two Common Law countries in the area of modern forms of law infringements focusing on the notions of revenge porn and fake porn. The first part contains definitions and descriptions of the terms ‘revenge porn’ and ‘fake porn’, pointing out to the context of the relationship between the dynamic technological development and use of artificial intelligence on the one hand and the regulatory framework failing to meet the current needs on the other. Further, examination is conducted of US and British legislation in force divided into civil and criminal law, indicating legislative gaps as well as the inefficiency of the existing legal solutions and presenting a range of proposals of legislative changes. The considerations have been supplemented with the results of the author’s assessment of sociological and statistical research available in source literature carried thus far in the field in question. The following section is dedicated to a comparative assessment of American and British legal solutions based on selected, critical issues. The final parts of the article serve to postulate systemic changes in legislation and is a proposal to introduce out-of-court dispute settlement methods in legal disputes pertaining to the matters discussed herein, and to frame future research directions.

In spring 2015, six private videos of a young Italian woman (T.C.) were uploaded on the web without her consent. The videos went immediately viral, and suddenly the woman found herself at the centre of a strenuous legal battle to have the videos removed from the internet and to obtain a change of surname. In her complaint, she stated that despite having willingly participated in the filming, she had never consented to the circulation of the videos and as a result of the unwanted publicity she was receiving she was unable to lead a normal life. Incapable of coping with the growing social pressure, in the late summer of 2016 the woman took her own life. Looking at the comments posted under two newspaper articles published online in the immediate aftermath of her suicide, this article examines the socio-cultural implications of nonconsensual pornography practices in the contemporary Italian public debate. Specifically, this study will try to address the following questions: how was T.C.’s case constructed by the public? How was the responsibility for her death framed in such a discussion? What are the implications of such responses when discussing societal sexism and gender inequality in contemporary Italy?.

Over the last decade, nonconsensual porn (NCP), or the sharing of sexually explicit material without a person’s consent, has become a growing problem with potentially far-reaching adverse consequences for victims. The purpose of this article is to propose and consider a framework for advancing the field’s understanding of NCP within the context of intimate relationships including situating NCP relative to other forms of relational abuse. Specifically, we examined the extent to which NCP in intimate partner relationships was perpetrated using tactics from the Power and Control Wheel through a summative content analysis of U.S. news stories on NCP from 2012 to 2017. This analysis established that NCP has been perpetrated using all eight of the abuse metatactics in the Power and Control Wheel, with the three most common being emotional abuse, coercion and threats, and denial/blame/minimization. Treating NCP in relationships as a potential form of partner violence provides a basis on which to understand the etiology, manifestation, motives, and impact of this form of abuse and informs practitioners’ ability to design prevention efforts and engage a trauma-informed response to survivors.

Sexting is a common behavior with studies reporting that 49% of adults have admitted to sending an intimate image and/or video of themselves to a romantic partner. The literature suggests that sexu...

This article analyzes nonconsensual pornography, the form of image-based sexual abuse colloquially known as “revenge porn,” through a consideration of agency and circulation in visual rhetoric as w...

This paper explores the connection between corporate social responsibility and social media safety. By examining the legal framework governing social platforms in the United States and case studies of online harms, we explore whether current U.S. laws and company content moderation policies are effective in eliminating content (revenge porn and acts of terrorism) that is universally agreed to be harmful. Finally, the paper makes a number of suggestions for improvements in policy.

Nonconsensual pornography, commonly known as “revenge porn,” is the dissemination of another’s sexually explicit images or videos without their consent. This article explores this phenomenon in gay and bisexual male online communities. The first part reviews the current sociological and legal literature on online dating, gay culture on the Internet, and revenge porn. Then, based on a survey of gay and bisexual male dating app users, ethnographic interviews, and an analysis of platform content moderation policies, the next part makes three related points. First, it shows that gay and bisexual men who use geosocial dating apps are more frequently victims of revenge porn than both the general population and the broader lesbian, gay, and bisexual community. Second, it shows that geosocial dating apps create powerful norms of disclosure that make sharing personal information all but required. And third, it describes how gay and bisexual male users engage in privacy navigation techniques with the goal of building trust and enhancing safety. The final substantive section then shows how inadequate protections for online privacy and inadequate legal incentives for safe platform design contribute to the problem of revenge porn. The article concludes with a summary and avenues for future research.

In this article I explore judicial interpretations of the relationship between digital technology and non-consensual intimate image distribution (NCIID) (i.e., “revenge porn”). Drawing on my analysis of forty-nine Canadian cases of NCIID, I show that judicial interpretations of digital technology have important influences on how NCIID is understood and responded to in the law. I find that the majority of judges perceive digital technology as making NCIID easier to commit—with the simple “click of a mouse”—and as increasing the amount of harm caused by this act—as digital nude/sexual photos are seen as lasting “forever” and thus as resulting in ongoing and immeasurable harm to victims. These perceptions have substantive impacts on legal rationales and sentencing decisions, with the affordances of digital technology regularly being treated as justifying harsher sentences to denounce and deter this act.

Image-based sexual abuse is the non-consensual sharing of private sexual images or videos. Although image-based sexual abuse has been described in various forms, the appropriate, universal term sho...

The first aim of this study was to analyze the prevalence and frequency of different forms of online sexual victimization and risks among sexual minorities, including sexting, sexual orientation- and gender-based victimization, unwanted sexual attention, sextortion, and revenge porn. The second aim was to examine whether online sexual victimization and risks mediate the relationship between being a sexual minority and mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety. The sample was composed of 1779 adolescents (50.9% girls) between 12 and 18 years old (mean age = 13.92, SD = 1.27), and 146 of them (8.2%) were sexual minorities (specifically, bisexual, homosexual, pansexual, asexual, or queer adolescents). About 17.3% of sexual minority adolescents have sent a sext. Four out of ten adolescents (41.1%) had experienced online sexual orientation discrimination and 28.4% gender-based victimization. More than forty percent (45.2%) experienced unwanted sexual attention, 9% were victims of sextortion, and 5.5% had been targets of revenge porn. Sexting, online sexual orientation victimization and gender-based victimization, and unwanted sexual attention partially mediated the relationship between being a sexual minority and mental health outcomes (i.e., depression and anxiety). More prevention programs aimed to reduce online sexual victimization and risks for sexual minorities are needed, Funding for this study was provided by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spanish Government) grant RTI2018-101167-B-I00

This article analyses the role of Telegram in orienting, amplifying, and normalizing the non-consensual diffusion of intimate images (NCII). We focus on the sense of anonymity, the platform’s weak regulation, and the possibility of creating large male communities, arguing that these affordances are “gendered affordances” as they orient male participants’ harassment behaviors and, in concert with an established misogynist culture, contribute to the reinstatement of hegemonic masculinity. The research draws on data collected through an online covert ethnography of Italian Telegram channels and groups.

'Revenge porn' or 'cyber rape' occurs when intimate images that were previously sent with permission are leaked to a wider audience without consent. This research investigated the perceptions that individuals form about 'revenge porn' victims, aiming to gain more understanding from a victimisation perspective as a first step towards improving victim outcomes. One hundred and twenty-two individuals were presented with a scenario depicting a leaked intimate image with a female victim. Two distinct nudity levels: low (lingerie) and high (bare-chest, breasts exposed) were included, and participants' responses to the Sexual Double Standards Scale were analysed to determine whether acceptance of the traditional sexual double standard was correlated with victim perception. Results indicated that victims were perceived as more promiscuous and more blameworthy when they were more naked, and by participants with more traditional gender roles. There is a need for policy to address potential stigma directed at 'revenge porn' victims.

Revenge porn is a growing problem in current U.S. media culture. According to the Data & Society Institute, one in 10 women under the age of 30 have been victims of or threatened with having their private sexually explicit images shared with the public without their consent. Most of the current research on revenge porn is from a legal perspective, dealing with issues of privacy and copyright. This article uses feminist phenomenology to explore the cultural influences of revenge porn, specifically the prevalence of the male gaze and male voyeurism in mainstream media. Understanding how revenge porn is situated in culture will allow for a better understanding of potential sites of resistance. This article argues for critical pedagogy and media literacy as possible solutions.

The criminalisation of ‘revenge porn’ offending responds to the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. By smart device or computer, the ability to distribute images assumed to be private a...

The question of how to tackle abuse through adolescent sexual image sharing is an increasing concern for schools, yet little is known about how they should respond. In this article, I review school...

The growth of information and communication technologies (ICT) and social networking sites (SNS) has generated new opportunities for violence, particularly aimed at women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities. The types of abuse that can occur on and through ICT and SNS represent the phenomenon of cyberviolence, including, but not limited to, cyberbullying, online harassment, cyber dating abuse, revenge porn, and cyberstalking. The authors undertook a literature review with the following aims: (1) evaluate how cyberviolence has been broadly conceived and studied in the scientific literature, and (2) assess the state of primary research in the cyberviolence field, identify gaps, and provide directions for future research. A search of peer-reviewed literature on cyberviolence published between 2006 and 2016 was conducted in May and June of 2016 through Academic Search Complete, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. These were read, prioritized, and analyzed against inclusion criteria. Where applic...

Many states have criminalized “revenge porn,” an increasingly common form of online sexual abuse. Yet, we know little regarding attitudes toward these laws. Through an original survey of nearly 500 U.S. residents, we find widespread public support for criminalization, but support varies by respondent’s self-identified gender and revenge porn type. Women favor criminalization more than men, but support falls among women and men when the subject created the media, colloquially known as “selfies” or “noodz.” Results suggest that women expressing their sexuality are deemed less deserving of protection, reinforcing feminist legal critiques of criminal law as insufficient to prevent sexual abuse.

Nonconsensual pornography, sometimes referred to as “revenge porn,” refers to the distribution of sexually explicit photographs or videos without the consent of the individual in the image. These images, along with accompanying personal information, are often disseminated by a former romantic or sexual partner with the intent to harm. Websites exist that have a reputation for hosting and promoting revenge porn. However, it is unclear to what extent these websites function for the purpose of explicitly harming victims by providing a victim's personal information. To address this question, a content analysis was performed on 134 photographs from seven different websites that originated within the United States. Descriptions of photos posted, content of victims' personal information included within the post, victim and distributor demographics, and viewers' comments were coded and analyzed. Website layouts and policies were also documented. Key findings were that nearly 92% of victims featured on included websites were women. Moreover, when a reason was given for posting the photo, it was correlated with having a greater number of views, being more likely to allow commenting on photos, and being more likely to include a victim's name. Implications are discussed.

Activists and legal scholars seeking remedies to non-consensual pornography (known colloquially as ‘revenge porn’) have generally framed it as a violation of privacy; however, the concept of privac...

The distribution of sexually private images without the consent of the subject, more commonly referred to as “revenge porn,” has become such a significant issue that politicians and legal scholars ...

In 2014, a large archive of hacked nude photos of female celebrities was released on 4chan and organized and discussed primarily on Reddit. This paper explores the ethical implications of this celebrity nude photo leak within a frame of gendered privacy violations. I analyze a selection of a mass capture of 5143 posts and 94,602 comments from /thefappening subreddit, as well as editorials written by female celebrities, feminists, and journalists. Redditors justify the photo leak by arguing the subjects are privileged because they are celebrities; that the celebrities are at fault for failing to appropriately protect their information; and that the only person ethically responsible for the leak is the hacker. The popular press primarily took a feminist perspective, linking the photo leak to institutionalized sexism and misogyny. I argue that the Reddit participants frame the privacy violations within a context of geek masculinity, in which references to masturbation and pornography and casually misogynist language are used to signify a normative masculine self. Privacy violations are de-emphasized when the victims are women and gender or feminist concerns are rejected. Entitlement to viewing women's bodies and male sexual desire are prioritized over ethical concerns over privacy violations. The paper contributes to understanding how privacy violations are normatively gendered and reinforced by gender inequality.

Due to child pornography laws, non-consensual intimate image sharing among youth is subjected to complex legal landscapes in a variety of jurisdictions such as Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. While a growing number of scholars have problematized the use of child pornography charges to respond to these cases, there remains little understanding regarding how the police that enforce these laws conceptualize this issue and how this influences responses to these cases. Drawing from interviews with members of sex crime–related units in police service organizations from across Canada, this article examines how police conceptions of non-consensual intimate image sharing among youth correspond with and/or diverge from legal and critical understandings of this issue. While it is widely understood that online and digitally enabled forms of sexual violence pose unique challenges for police, our research fills a gap in the literature by examining how police themselves understand and respond to these challenges.

Currently, a range of criminal offences are perpetrated online. In addition to the commission of traditional offences, such as fraud, stalking, and domestic violence, new phenomena have emerged to warrant attention from the media, government, and communities. The phenomenon colloquially referred to as ‘revenge porn' stands as one of the greater threats to public morality. To date, legislative responses to circumscribe revenge porn, both internationally and in Australia, have been sporadic and disjunctive. This article critically examines the impact and prevalence of revenge porn and provides a critical analysis of the civil and criminal responses to its commission. It concludes by arguing that addressing the challenges associated with investigating such offences, and educating about the dangers of revenge porn have to some extent been overlooked in the rush to legislate and create new offences. The article highlights that existing legislation may provide adequate protection.

Digital communications are largely used for positive interactions but can also be a vehicle for harassment. Previous research has made is clear that sexting occurs, at times, because of peer pressure. This study examined pressured sexting and the unauthorized release of images in a cross-sectional sample studied in 2013-15. The convenience sample examined 1,320 students in Massachusetts. Over the years, more students admitted to sexting, but fewer reported any degree of pressure to sext. More than a third of sexters in 2014 and almost half of sexters in 2015 reported that the picture had been released without their consent. Interestingly, this did not seem to occur primarily within established relationships; instead, it seemed to target most often sexters who declined to date someone. Unauthorized distribution was related to several risk factors, including younger-aged sexters, those who sexted to multiple recipients, and those who were pressured into sexting initially.

International audience; This chapter demonstrates how cybersexism can be employed as a new way of socially controlling expressions of gender and sexuality. Cybersexism refers to acts of violence that: (1) occur or linger in cyberspace; (2) are sexist, homophobic (lesbophobic) or sexual in nature; and (3) reiterate dominant gender norms targeting girls and boys (tarnishing the former’s reputation and threatening the latter’s masculinity). Data presented stems from the first study on cybersexism in French high schools: 1127 students (ages 12–16) completed the survey questionnaire, and 415 students/48 adults from the same schools took part in focus groups or individual interviews on the topic. It draws the portrait of cybersexism as an inherent part of a digital sociability for French youth, whose gendered and sexualized identities are increasingly developed –at least partially – in cyberspace. This chapter focuses on two characteristics of cybersexism: its pervasiveness since it results from internalized gender expectations and its existence as an outcome of constant peer pressure to adhere to gender norms of heterosexual masculinity and femininity.

Online markets for Child Exploitation Materials (CEM) or Child Sex Abuse materials (CSAM) have developed in tandem with the rapid expansion of the Internet. CEM images of sexual abuse of children, often photographs and videos, include live transmission of sexual assault as well as simulated experiences using virtual reality technology or robotics. User-generated images, sexting and ‘revenge porn’ are new sources of image-based abuse often involving older children. This chapter describes the prevalence and nature of CEM, profiles of offenders and victims, and law enforcement responses. The content of CEM constitutes a crime scene that can help trace offenders and identify victims, but poses challenges for digital forensics. Definitions of CEM, the relationship between online and offline offending; emerging developments in CEM; and international, regulatory, and collaborative approaches to suppress CEM are described.

Purpose Revenge pornography is a growing risk among adolescents and young adults. Often stemming from sexting, some victims of revenge pornography report experiencing victim-blame similar to that accompanying the reporting of rape. The purpose of this paper is to explore the assumptions that underlie attributions of victim-blame, with a focus on perpetrator and victim responsibility, as well as gendered assumptions surrounding sexting. Design/methodology/approach A total of 222 UK university students (111 male, 111 females) read one of two versions of a hypothetical revenge pornography scenario, one involving a male victim of a female perpetrator, the other a female victim of a male perpetrator. They then responded to an open-ended question regarding responsibility. Findings Qualitative content analysis of these responses identified three inter-related themes: the victim’s behaviour, mitigating victim responsibility and minimising the behaviour. Social implications The majority of participants in this study attributed at least some responsibility to the victims of revenge pornography depicted in the scenarios. Sex of the victim played a less important role than assumptions around sexting. Originality/value The study suggests that victim-blame is linked to the consent implied by sharing intimate images with a partner, but is also mitigated by the normative nature of this relationship practice. There was some evidence that the experience of male victims of revenge pornography is trivialised. These findings have implications for e-safety and victim support.

Revenge porn involves publicly releasing pictures of a person’s sexual activity, along with the means to contact that person, to provoke widespread shaming. This paper analyzes the US-based revenge porn website MyEx.com through discourse, legal, and information network analyses. The paper explores how revenge porn is not only an instance of online sexual violence rooted in abjection but also symptomatic of a new political economy of subjectivity, where both the human-based and the automated, algorithm-based circulation of personal information are at the center of processes through which the self is seen and valued, both socially and economically, by others.

This paper presents a novel study, exploring a form of technology facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) known as revenge porn. Despite its emerging prevalence, little is known about the characteristics of revenge porn perpetrators. In the current study, a revenge porn proclivity scale was devised to examine participants' behavioural propensity to engage in revenge porn. One hundred adults, aged 18-54, were recruited online from a community sample. The correlational relationship between revenge porn proclivity and the self-reported endorsement of the Dark Triad, sadism, and ambivalent sexism was examined. Additional proclivity subscales of revenge porn enjoyment and revenge porn approval were also created. The study's main findings revealed a positive correlation between a greater behavioural propensity to engage in revenge porn and higher levels of the Dark Triad and ambivalent sexism. Moreover, endorsement of psychopathy was found to be the only Dark Triad trait that independently predicted revenge porn proclivity. The results suggest that perpetrators of revenge porn may have distinct personality profiles. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

The Internet as a fearful place is a theme apparent in numerous film and television presentations whereby fears and anxieties about new technology are exploited and new ethical challenges are mounted. The idea that the Internet can make a person, particularly a young person, vulnerable has much traction on screen: in the context of bullying, narratives frequently demonstrate that while it was once restricted to the parameters of school—the school grounds and the school day—the Internet enables such behavior to happen at any time and for it to occur repeatedly with an infinite audience. Anybody with Internet access—be it via their laptop or smartphone—can be bullied; equally, anyone with access to such technology can become the bully. Revictimization is the starting point for this discussion and is a key factor in distinguishing cyberbullying from the schoolyard terror of the pre–Web era. The public nature of many online attacks means that victims experience abuse in an ongoing fashion in turn, exacerbating and prolonging the trauma. Other themes explored include the flexibility of roles: whereas in schoolyard bullying the victim is frequently the weaker kid preyed upon by someone older and stronger; online the weaker kid can effortlessly become the bully themselves in a world where physical brawn is less important than computer prowess. Age and gender are also examined, along with emerging social concerns such as slut-shaming and revenge porn. These themes are each explored to expose the ways film and television depict social concerns exacerbated by new technology.

Cyber-harassment and Revenge pornography are international problems that can cause psychological, financial and physical harm to their victims. And yet, despite legal efforts in several countries, the law has yet to fully address these issues. Instead, enactment and enforcement of laws is undermined by the gendered nature of these acts, which leads to (typically male) police and prosecutors to treat victims with ambivalence and even scorn. This article shows that, despite the prevalence and dangers involved with cyber-harassment and revenge porn, victims are still often left without redress. This article also analyzes law enforcement's tendency to minimize victims' harm and blame victims for their own suffering. Finally, this article discusses how perceptions may begin to change, which could lead to a better understanding of the full range of behaviors and effects of cyber-harassment and revenge pornography and, consequently, better legal outcomes for victims.

UGotPosted.com, SnapSext.com, SnapGFs.com, snapchatleaked.com, Huntermoore.tv, etc., are websites where you do not want to find your picture. These websites are nonconsensual pornography websites. If you do unexpectedly find an intimate image of yourself on one of these websites—or any other porn website for that matter— your best legal recourse is through your state’s revenge porn law. However, if your state has yet to enact one, you might have to fight a legal battle in a notoriously grey area of the law. Pennsylvania recently enacted a revenge porn statute in 2014. But, prior to the adoption of 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3131, entitled “Unlawful Dissemination of Intimate Image,” Pennsylvania residents had to navigate through the grey area of legal recourse, such as arguing one’s case under Pennsylvania’s Invasion of Privacy statute. This new area of sexual harassment through high-tech means proved to be growing and could no longer be ignored by state legislatures.

Non-consensual dissemination of sexual images, often denoted as ‘revenge porn’, can be described as the act of distributing photos or videos depicting individuals in sexually suggestive or explicit circumstances without consent. The harmful impact can be felt both in the private and professional spheres of victims. Questions were raised across jurisdictions regarding the applicability of existing criminal law provisions or the need for legislative initiatives. After analysing the terminology and scope, this article examines three US state level dedicated laws, the amended UK Criminal Justice and Courts Act, and a dedicated provision in the Belgian Criminal Code. This analysis results in the identification of key elements that could serve as guidance for legislators to amend or adopt criminal legislation. Such provisions should include clearly delineated definitions, acknowledge that the lack of consent of the pictured person is the trigger for criminalisation, provide for relevant defences, and integrate sufficiently deterrent sanctions.

This study examines the emotional and mental health effects revenge porn has on female survivors. To date, no other academic studies have exclusively focused on mental health effects in revenge porn cases. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted between February 2014 and January 2015 with 18 female revenge porn survivors, and inductive analysis revealed participants’ experiences of trust issues, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and several other mental health effects. These findings reveal the seriousness of revenge porn, the devastating impacts it has on survivors’ mental health, and similarities between revenge porn and sexual assault.

Revenge pornography emerged in a flurry moral panic in 2010 when Hunter Moore created the website Is Anyone Up? (isanyoneup.com), where anonymous Internet users submitted nude photos for thousands of unknown purveyors to view. Moore’s endeavor appeared ingenious: What better way could angry exes enact revenge and humiliation on former partners than by displaying their naked photos, against their will and without consent, on a notorious website? The site’s “spirit of retaliation,” apparent from an anthem whose lyrics consisted of “Cheated on me and broke my heart / Gonna show the world your private parts” lives on due to the emergence of other revenge pornography sites, despite the fact that isanyoneup.com was disbanded and Moore recently arrested. Using a critical theoretical framework, this article illustrates that victims of revenge pornography are emblematic of post-feminist and neoliberal hostilities. As such, this article contends that revenge pornography is about revenge and humiliation, not sex.

Despite recent progress in terms of the legal response to the problem of what is colloquially termed ‘revenge porn’, victims continue to face difficulties when seeking the removal of their private sexual images from third-party websites.\ud \ud While victims who are able to assert authorship and hence copyright ownership of these images can rely on the notice and takedown provisions found in the copyright laws of many jurisdictions to compel their removal, victims who are unable to make such claims are left without a similar remedy. However, current proposals for victims to be recognized as the joint authors of such images, or to be granted a new exclusive right to prevent their distribution, would disrupt fundamental copyright principles in a manner disproportionate to their underlying aims.\ud \ud This article puts forward an alternative solution, drawing inspiration from the recent settlement in Chambers v DCR: where a claimant has succeeded in obtaining injunctive relief against a defendant on the basis of the non-consensual distribution of the claimant’s private sexual images, a court may make a further order directing the defendant to assign any copyright they may have in the images to the claimant. This would function in a manner akin to the well-established remedy of delivery up.

Revenge pornography is the online, and at times offline, non-consensual distribution, or sharing, of explicit images by ex-partners, partners, others, or hackers seeking revenge or entertainment. In this article, we discursively analyse a selected range of electronic written texts accompanying explicit images posted by self-identified straight/gay/lesbian (male-to-female, female-to-male, male-to-male, female-to-female postings) on a popular revenge pornography website ‘MyEx.com’. Situating our analysis in debates on gender and sexuality, we examine commonalities and differences in the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which gender and sexuality are invoked in posters’ accounts of their motivations for revenge pornography.

‘Revenge porn’ is conceptualised as a modern phenomenon which the law is not equipped to deal with. The advent of smartphone technology has allowed sexually explicit material to be created easily and disseminated quickly. An increasing number of individuals have fallen victim to this phenomenon in recent years. This paper submits that victims of revenge porn ought to be held due monetary redress in the civil law, while acknowledging that the damage done by revenge porn need not necessarily involve a loss. Victims of revenge porn are likely to suffer from severe emotional distress and upset, but these injuries are non-patrimonial. This can consequently make it difficult to frame an action for damages. This paper asks if the delict iniuria might offer appropriate remedy in instances of revenge porn. The actio iniuriarum was, in Roman law, a delict which served to protect the non-patrimonial aspects of a person's existence – ‘who a person is rather than what a person has’. As the propagation of sexually explicit images of an individual without their consent is clearly an affront to the esteem of that individual, it is argued that instances of revenge porn ought to be considered actionable as iniuria in modern Scottish law.

Author(s): Hamilton, Ashlee | Abstract: People often use retributive and utilitarian concepts to argue that we should throw people in jail for sharing nudes without the permission of the person depicted. But it turns out that imprisoning people is not the best approach. Revenge porn, the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images, is not an individual problem. It is a sign that something is wrong with our society. There are revenge porn criminal statutes in about thirty-four states and the District of Columbia, but many of them are ineffective due to limitations imposed by the First Amendment. Thus, many scholars advocate for this to be a federal crime. Criminalization within our current criminal justice system, while convenient, is not the best approach partly because prison makes most people worse off than they were when they came. Furthermore, the United States is over-incarcerated and should find better ways to deal with crimes like revenge porn. A transformative justice approach, which attempts to work outside of the criminal justice system to achieve meaningful remedies for survivors and meaningful punishments for offenders, is our best bet.

Technologically mediated forms of sexual abuse have been the subject of extensive media discussion in the 2000s. Arguably, digital media have transformed sexual abuse. Cultural anxieties around sexting and revenge porn have been accompanied by an emerging body of scholarly literature on image-based sexual abuse and harassment. Concern with image-based sexual abuse has centered on the non-consensual distribution of private nude images of women and girls via digital media, which is often represented as harmful, dangerous for the woman or girl in the image, and potentially criminal. Conversely, scholars have just begun to turn their attention to men's intentional distribution of unsolicited images of their penises to women. In this article, we consider the theoretical concepts of the continuum of sexual violence and sexual and aggrieved entitlement alongside the interdisciplinary literature on image-based sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and exhibitionism to propose a future research agenda for understanding the contemporary phenomenon of men sending unsolicited dick pics to women. We argue that dick pics merit scholarly attention as an emerging cultural practice.

Advances in technology have transformed and expanded the ways in which sexual violence can be perpetrated. One new manifestation of such violence is the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images: what we conceptualise as ‘image-based sexual abuse’. This article delineates the scope of this new concept and identifies the individual and collective harms it engenders. We argue that the individual harms of physical and mental illness, together with the loss of dignity, privacy and sexual autonomy, combine to constitute a form of cultural harm that impacts directly on individuals, as well as on society as a whole. While recognising the limits of law, we conclude by considering the options for redress and the role of law, seeking to justify the deployment of the expressive and coercive powers of criminal and civil law as a means of encouraging cultural change.