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Research informs that bisexual women face harsher sexual stereotypes than lesbian and straight women. We, therefore, explored the relationship between objectification and victim blame in cases of r...

In 2019, the US State of Maryland’s highest court upheld the conviction of a 16-year-old minor for distributing her own ‘child pornography’ when she privately sent a clip of her performing a (completely legal) sexual act to a social media group of which only she and her two best friends were members. Considering that the child porn statute was never meant to prosecute legal and consensual sexting, this criminalization appears to be contra legem in light of the fact that the Court would not have regarded it as an offence if the girl was two years older (which does not make any difference to the legality of the sexual act since the age of sexual consent in Maryland is 16). The Court’s penalization of this act of sexting seems inappositely puritanical especially when it is noted that the convict was a victim of ‘revenge porn’ since one of the two friends leaked the clip in her school in an apparent act of revenge after their friendship ended. This paper analyses both the majority and dissenting opinions of this 2019 judgment to come to the conclusion that the majority ignores the true purport of the US Supreme Court decisions and wrongly invokes the doctrines for interpreting legislative intent to buttress its stance. As Maryland has criminalized acts of ‘revenge porn’, this article’s focus extends to examining how the Court’s failure of factoring in the effect of Maryland’s ‘revenge porn’ statute in discerning the legislative intent of the ‘child porn’ statute has produced an aberration of a statutory interpretation.

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.

A közösségi média és a mesterséges intelligencia alapú tartalomszerkesztő alkalmazások könnyű hozzáférhetősége kimondottan kedvez az olyan újfajta tartalmak közzétételének, mint a bosszúpornó (revenge porn) és az algoritmusok által manipulált felvételek (deepfake). Ezeknek a tartalmaknak a közzététele Magyarországon jelenleg nem képez külön tényállást a büntető törvénykönyvben. Más országokban már élénk szabályozási diskurzusok folynak a jelenség büntetendővé nyilvánításáról. Az, hogy az USA, Németország, Franciaország, Olaszország és az Egyesült Királyság is megtette a kezdő lépéseket ebbe az irányba, azt mutatja, hogy olyan problémáról van szó, amely országtól és régiótól független, és amelyre figyelni kell. A jövőbeli szabályozás alapjogi szempontból talán az egyik legjelentősebb kérdése az, hogy az egyének számára okozott sérelem indokolja-e a közléstípus előzetes, teljes tilalmát és a szólásszabadság büntetőjogi eszközökkel történő korlátozását. Az egyelőre kezdetleges állami szabályozás hézagjait jelenleg a platformok magánszabályozás révén töltik ki. Ez egyrészről üdvözlendő, hiszen a felhasználók számára a védelem minimális szintje biztosított. Nem szerencsés viszont abból a szempontból, hogy az egyes platformok eltérő szigorral, szemléletmóddal szabályozzák ugyanazokat a jelenségeket.

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.

Although the issue of revenge porn dates back before the popularization of social media, concerns over its gender bias and other adverse concomitant ramifications have recently attracted attention from a human rights perspective. While it has been widely acknowledged that women subjugation through revenge porn is a reality in Zimbabwe, this has not been met with the radical policy reformations that the challenge demands. Using a qualitative approach, this paper explored the dynamics surrounding revenge porn as a phenomenon thwarting the efforts of women-NGOs in their fight against gender inequality and women exclusion. The paper underscores the urgent need to enact laws that would provide a clear legal and policy framework for dealing with revenge porn in Zimbabwe.

Using video recounts from revenge porn victims, this study explores whether levels of victim blaming differs for the sharing of self- and stealth-taken sexually explicit images and videos. Building on previous work which has demonstrated victim blame for both self- and stealth generated images in occurrences of revenge porn (Zvi & Schechory-Bitton, 2020), the reported study presents an original and ecologically valid methodological approach whereby 342 (76 male, 266 female) participants (Mage = 39.27, SD = 11.70) from the UK watched videoed accounts of real experiences of falling victim to revenge porn, rather than using text based, often fictional, vignettes to attribute blame which dominate studies in this area. All data was collected in 2019. The results demonstrated that significantly more blame was assigned to victims when participants were indirectly rather than directly asked who was to blame for the occurrence of revenge porn, supporting the notion of an unconscious processing bias in attributing blame. More blame was also assigned to those victims who themselves generated the material compared to when it had been acquired without their awareness by a perpetrator, suggesting the cognitive bias to be in line with a just world hypothesis. Male participants were more likely to blame a victim than were female participants, although sex of victim and mode of shared sexually-explicit material (video or image) did not appear to affect levels of victim-blame. Findings are considered in terms of extant research and the need for future work in the area of victim blame and revenge pornography.

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.

This article gives voice to Mathilde, Karen and Amalie: Three young women who had intimate images of themselves shared non-consensually online. Their experi- ences help build a framework for categorising digital sexual assault (DSA), aswell as giving insight into how shame, in cases of DSA, connects to social media affordances. The empirical data was produced during four creative writing work- shops. The participants described their experiences during these workshops and they collectively developed strategies for defying shame. This article analyses their experiences of shame, their shame-defying strategies, and the role that social media played in forming types of aggressors and assault experiences. I present what I call the onlooker as a digitally augmented aggressor and I show how this aggressor inflicts shame through the look, as described by Sartre. This results in a discussion of imaginary, progressive contra-shaming, which is one of the four coping strategies that showed empowering potential in relation to DSA.

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...

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.

In this new textbook, social media professor Jeremy Lipschultz introduces students to the study of social media law and ethics, integrating legal concepts and ethical theories. The book explores free expression, as it applies to students, media industry professionals, content creators and audience members. Key issues and practices covered include copyright law, data privacy, revenge porn, defamation, government censorship, social media platform rules, and employer policies. Research techniques are also used to suggest future trends in social media law and ethics. Touching on themes and topics of significant contemporary relevance, this accessible textbook can be used in standalone law and ethics courses, as well as emerging social media courses that are disrupting traditional public relations, advertising and journalism curricula. Case studies, discussion questions, and online resources help students engage with the complexities and ambiguities of this future-oriented area of media law, making it an ideal textbook for students of media law, policy and ethics, mass media, and communication studies.

Academic debates on shame and the involuntary networked circulation of naked pictures have largely focused on instances of hacked accounts of female celebrities, on revenge porn, and interconnected forms of slut-shaming. Meanwhile, dick pics have been predominantly examined as vehicles of sexual harassment within heterosexual contexts. Taking a somewhat different approach, this article examines leaked or otherwise involuntarily exposed dick pics of men of notable social privilege, asking what kinds of media events such leaked data assemble, how penises become sites of public interest and attention, and how these bodies may be able to escape circuits of public shaming. By focusing on high-profile incidents on an international scale during the past decade, this article moves from the leaked shots of male politicians as governance through shaming to body-shaming targeted at Harvey Weinstein, to Jeff Bezos’s refusal to be shamed through his hacked dick pic, and to an accidentally self-published shaft shot of Lars Ohly, a Swedish politician, we examine the agency afforded by social privilege to slide through shame rather than be stuck in it. By building on feminist media studies and affect inquiry, we attend to the specificities of these attempts to shame, their connections to and disconnections from slut-shaming, and the possibilities and spaces offered for laughter within this all.

Emotion and affect play a complex but critical role in the learning process. Researchers and educators have increasingly incorporated emotional understanding into pedagogy as captured in the now common refrain “teach to the whole student”. Social and emotional learning aims to improve academic outcomes in the classroom as well as promoting necessary emotional development in relationships and career outside the classroom. The proliferation of digital technologies poses opportunities and challenges for supporting the development of students’ emotional self-awareness. the role of emotion in the use and experience of digital technologies is profound. Marketing manipulation, online trolling, revenge porn, and digital escapism are just a few examples of challenges where emotion plays a central role. The increasingly “onlife” nature of our social experience suggests the need for emotional self-awareness (ESA) is only growing. However, there is a lack of coherence in the literature regarding what teaching ESA around digital technologies means. This chapter will argue that ESA ought to play a more prominent role in digital literacy curricula and is undertheorized in digital literacy literature.

‘Revenge Porn’ is described as a very serious issue because of its detrimental consequences on victims and society as a whole. This situation generated the need for direct measures which could tackle the issue. However, despite its gravity and severity, the adopted criminal law responses, particularly in England and Cyprus, seem to be misleading, unsatisfactory and inadequate for various reasons. At the same time, the preventive techniques, in these countries, could be described as problematic, unable, in that way, to prevent the commission of the offence by future offenders and protect their potential victims from further damage. This chapter focuses on these issues and, by referring to theorists, reports and researches, attempts to identify the offence and its seriousness. Subsequently, comparing the law in England and Cyprus suggests various legislative improvements and practical, preventive solutions, which could be used to provide coherent and efficient responses to the aforementioned offence.

'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.

The evolution of social media in recent years has significantly changed the way society interacts and engages with each other. Research has shown that there has been a 21% increase in social media usage by UK adults from 2011 to 2017. This drastic shift regarding the way we communicate can be said to bring many benefits; however, it can also impose serious legal issues. Such legal issues include ‘revenge porn’, online blackmail and ‘trolling’. For the purpose of this investigation, the main focus of the research will be on the area of offensive online communications.The investigation will cover the effectiveness of the current criminal law in terms of offensive online communications. In addition to this, the research will be highlighting any gaps within the current law in regard to overcoming this problem. When considering potential reforms, the right to freedom of expression will remain at the forefront of the research to prevent any alienation of human rights.

Among many forms of abuse of privacy in the cyberspace and social media networks, particular attention is given to the so-called cyber misogyny. It refers to the existence of deeply rooted prejudices against women and encompasses various forms of gender- based hatred, harassment and violence against women that occur in a virtual (cyber) space. The subject of this paper is an analysis of emerging forms of cyber misogyny, particularly focusing on one of its most widespread forms: revenge porn. Through revenge porn in the cyberspace, misogyny can be manifested through publishing someone’s intimate photos, that is, photos of their intimate private life or sexually explicit photos and videos. In all these cases, publications in cyberspace or social media occur without the knowledge, willingness or consent of the photographed person. The purpose behind such activity is to shame and/or humiliate the victim by causing her pain and moral suffering for reasons of revenge. The anonymity of the victim is not preserved; on the contrary, her identity and other relevant data are listed in order to identify and make the victim more visible. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to point out to the seriousness of this phenomenon that occurs in the cyberspace, which presents violation of privacy and causes difficult consequences for the victim. Furthermore, the aim is to investigate the possibilities of criminalization and protection of the (mostly female) victims of this criminal act. The main topics analysed in this paper include: a definition of cyber misogyny and revenge porn, an explanation of the most common forms of its manifestation, existing forms of protection, and criminalization of revenge porn worldwide and in the Republic of Serbia.

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.

This Article examines these issues by deconstructing the regulatory schema of the jurisdictions that criminalize NCP into fundamental elements. Part I addresses background facts, representative incidents, and damages to victims. Part II analyzes the general construction of criminal statutes into actus reus and mens rea elements. Part III sets forth a review of the statutory schemes that criminalize NCP. Part IV reviews the circumstances of jurisdictions without NCP statutes. Part V considers some sources of differences in the elements included in the various NCP statutes. This analysis reveals that the more numerous the essential elements of an NCP statute, the more likely the statute will allow substantial NCP conduct to escape prosecution. Conversely, statutes that focus on the issue of the victim’s lack of consent for the defendant to distribute the intimate image and that have fewer additional essential elements allow fewer perpetrators of NCP to escape prosecution. This Article also examines the underlying factors that resulted in these disparities, including the rigors and compromises inherent in the political process under-lying the enactment of such statutes, and the influence of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As described herein, the twenty-first century is characterized by constant technological innovation and an increased pace of change in social values. The shortcomings of these NCP regulatory schema raise the prospect that the U.S. legal system is struggling to protect the general public from bad actors that exploit these techno-logical and social developments.

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.

Recent legislative developments have led to a marked increase in the empirical investigation of motivations and judgments of so-called acts of “revenge pornography” offending. In two independently sampled studies, we used moderation analyses to investigate whether higher levels of intrasexual competition predicted more lenient judgments of revenge pornography offenses as a function of sex (Study 1, N = 241), and whether such relationships would be further moderated by physical attractiveness (Study 2, N = 402). Potential covariates of callous-unemotional traits, empathy, and victimization history were controlled for. Opposing our hypotheses, we consistently observed a trend for higher levels of intrasexual competition being associated with more lenient judgments of revenge pornography offenses involving male victims by female participants. The results are discussed in terms of intrasexual competition potentially sharing variance with unobserved constructs in the wider sexological literature, and of the key relevance of these findings for future empirical investigation into judgments of nonconsensual image–based offending.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Clear and effective laws against “revenge porn” are necessary to protect the values of privacy, autonomy, and equality. The unauthorized disclosure of private, sexually explicit images harms not only individuals but society as a whole. The wave of legislative reform since 2013 is a welcome development, but the majority of state criminal laws mischaracterize the social harm as harassment rather than a privacy violation. State and federal laws that accurately articulate the social harm of nonconsensual pornography are necessary for deterrence as well as to provide just and effective remedies for victims. While non-criminal remedies are also important and necessary, the immediate and often irreparable nature of the harm of “revenge porn” requires the maximum deterrence potential and moral force of criminal law.

This chapter addresses the criminalization of “revenge porn” in England and Wales under the 2015 Criminal Justice and Courts Act (CJC Act). Revenge porn is a particular form of online abuse that mainly harms women and is mainly conducted by men. One of the most common emotional responses to revenge porn is shame. Owing to this, this chapter sets out to assess (1) the conditions that enable revenge porn to perform shaming of women and (2) the CJC Act’s ability to target these conditions. This chapter argues that, in terms of its ability to address the conditions that enable revenge porn to perform the shaming of women, the CJC Act falls short. The law only captures cases in which it can be proven that the alleged perpetrator acted with an intention to cause distress. Essentially, it fails to address how revenge porn is an inherently social form of online abuse: revenge porn can only perform the shaming of women when the audience recognizes it as such. Indeed, that which enables revenge porn to operate so successfully as an act of shaming women is pre-existing social conventions with regard to sexual depictions of female bodies and sexuality. This chapter thus states that the shaming in revenge porn is primarily enabled by social conventions, not individual intentions. As it stands, the CJC Act is therefore a futile legal tool for striking revenge porn at its gendered core.

When the discussion about engaging people to take an active approach to cybersecurity there is a focus on ensuring they protect their devices from malware and controlling access to their devices. There is a lesser focus on providing education and awareness to identify potential attacks from malicious actors. At the moment technology and software companies focus on protecting devices and not the people directly. This is due to a need to protect data from malware and unauthorised access. The conversation surrounding cybersecurity and data protection has come to the fore again due to the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR) and hardware design flaws that include Intel Spectre bug. This paper will look at four areas the first is basic phishing attack along with malware and ransomware. The second area is compromised devices that includes cryptojacking and distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS). The third area is swatting attacks looking at experiences in America and Europe. Which include privacy protection, spoofing and fraud. The fourth area is the problem of online sextortion and revenge porn. Which includes entrapment, grooming, limited education and awareness. A gap analysis will examine what is being done in cybersecurity in these areas and what needs to be done to provide better cybersecurity in these areas in order to achieve better cybersecurity protection for people from malicious actors. Finally, the questions of are we designing cybersecurity to protect people from malicious actors will be answered.

‘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.

Digital technology and social media have become the predominant form of communication and socialization for adolescents, positively contributing to the production of knowledge, communication, and creative expression. However, the dark side of the digital revolution has brought unforeseen problematic behaviors that threaten the protection and development of adolescents. Among many potential problematic behaviors, the book Adolescent Sexual Behavior in the Digital Age focuses specifically on adolescents’ problematic sexual behaviors in the digital age. Due to the lack of proper understanding of teenage sexual development’s relationship to technology, adults often fail to protect adolescents from harming themselves and others. The core argument of the book is that adolescents outpace adults in their technology usage, fostering problematic behaviors that are unregulated and not properly addressed. As a result, the book examines the rapidly changing sexual behaviors to aid in comprehending adolescent sexuality in today’s ever evolving digital age. To achieve this goal, the book is effectively written in three parts by multiple leading authorities: Part I of the book (chapters 1‐4) includes the legal, developmental and psychological aspects of adolescent sexual behavior, aiding the overall understanding of relationship between adolescent sexuality and technology. Part II (chapters 5‐10) introduces unforeseen problematic behaviors of the digital age that would raise the readers’ awareness of its destructive potentials. Finally, in Part III (chapters 11‐15) of the book, practical implications and suggestions for potential best practices are suggested. The book is very well structured, beginning with the introduction of main topics and gradually informing the readers about examples of recent problematic behaviors, and lastly, concluding with possible solutions to such problems. The book presents an interesting and important topic for all readers involved with adolescents. The first chapter starts by introducing several cases of newly formed sexual behaviors and criticizes legal responses. An example is introduced with the case of a 17-year-old teen posting nude photos of his ex-girlfriend on the Internet as a form of revenge. Now commonly labeled as revenge porn, these actions lead victims to suffer severe mental harm and embarrassment and, in some cases, result in suicide. Another common newly formed behavior in the digital age is sexting. Unlike revenge porn, teens consensually send each other nude photos of themselves. Adolescents involved in these behaviors have been charged for manufacturing, disseminating, and possessing child pornography. They can further be penalized by being registered as sex offenders. Although the government has a very compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children, the court’s decision of registering these teens as sex offenders is controversial. The examples portray cases where laws originally designed to protect children were actually used to criminalize them. Clearly, newly formed adolescent behaviors in the digital age are regulated by laws that were not designed to address the specific issues presented. The current legal system’s lack of preparation in dealing with new forms of crime and deviant acts implies the need of effective methods for regulating the newly formed behaviors. The relationship between youth development and communication technologies, stages of sexual development in adolescents, and understanding of new technology are suggested as critical factors

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.

This paper analyzes the criminal offence of the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (frequently called “revenge porn”). Focussing on the debate currently underway in Canada surrounding Bill C-13 (Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act), it notes that such an offence would fill a grey area in that country’s criminal law. Arguing, more broadly, that the criminal law has an important expressive function, the paper posits that the offence targets the same general type of wrongdoing — sexual objectification — that undergirds sexual assault. While not all objectification merits criminal sanction, the paper explains why the non-consensual distribution of intimate images does, and why a specific offence is legitimate.

This study seeks to understand and critique the growing online trend of “revenge porn,” or the intentional embarrassment of identifiable individuals through the posting of nude images online. This posting of intimate pictures, often done out of motives of revenge for perceived relational scorn, is enhanced by the varying levels of online anonymity. Using the theoretical framework of John Dewey's pragmatism, this study both analyzes this understudied but complex new problem precipitated by the conditions of the online self and establishes the groundwork for the use of pragmatist ethics in other areas of communication ethics.

Young people's use of technology as a tool for the negotiation of their sexual identities and encounters has increasingly become a focal point in popular and scholarly discussion. Much of this debate centres on the sending of explicit sexual images and/or video (‘selfies’ or ‘sexting’) by mobile phone, email or social media. In Australia and elsewhere, legislative frameworks have arguably over-regulated or criminalised young people's consensual, digital, sexual communications. Equally, the law has failed to respond to the harm that is experienced by victims of non-consensual making and/or distribution of such sexual images. In this paper, we examine the non-consensual creation and distribution of sexual images in the context of harassment, stalking and family or intimate violence. We argue that harmful digital communications are often framed as a problem of user naiveté rather than gender-based violence. Moreover, we argue that current legal and policy approaches fail to adequately capture the social and psychological harm that results from the use of sexual imagery to harass, coerce or blackmail women. We draw on preliminary data from a larger project investigating adult women's experiences of technology-mediated sexual violence and harassment.

The First Amendment Bubble: How Privacy and Paparazzi Threaten a Free Press. Amy Gajda. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015. 317 pp. $35 hbk.The First Amendment Bubble is a cautionary read for those who think that the Bill of Rights will protect them from censorship and lawsuits. In her thorough analysis of the evolution of media case law, Tulane University law professor Amy Gajda makes a convincing case that news organizations and journalism programs must forego absolutist positions on the First Amendment, or, she warns, we could face a legislative and judicial backlash so harsh, it will roll back such protections to the pre-Sullivan era.Gajda, a former broadcast journalist, argues that more and more judges are expressing skepticism that quasi-journalists-particularly those who focus on celebrity gossip, revenge porn, and public shaming and humiliation of everyday people-deserve the special treatment the courts have given the press. Meanwhile, faced with intense competition for eyeballs and page clicks, serious journalism organizations find themselves chasing stories that used to be the domain of the tabloids. This has so blurred the lines between the quasi-journalists and mainstream journalists and between entertainment and news that neither the public nor judges seem willing or able to differentiate. Any pushback against quasi-journalists will affect the entire journalism establishment.The only shortcoming in this book was that Gadja underemphasizes the power and pressure of customizable news; the reality is that the eyes of potential newsreaders drift to videos of arrogant cats and men trying on women's bikinis. That forces news organizations to pump out stories that are more visceral than important. It is hard to take the high road in that world.Still, Gadja makes a strong case that journalism organizations need to wake up to a new reality. Professional media ethics codes and media law and ethics classes focus on libel-proofing stories and give short shrift to individual privacy rights and the idea of basic human dignity. As an example, she points to codes and practices that teach students that anything that happens in a public space is up for grabs-that no one can argue privacy rights in public. Through one case after another, Gajda demonstrates a disconnect between the press and the public it reports on and to. Despite people's willingness to share just about anything online, they are increasingly asserting privacy rights in public spaces and on the Internet. …

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.

It must be noted that the modern legal history of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh may show that all these three countries have framed their penal laws from colonial British Penal laws which was the governing law of the Indian peninsula in pre-independence era (prior to 1947). As such, the present criminal laws of these countries including those dealing with violence against women (including physical and online) may have similar features. This chapter argues that South Asian countries including India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan do not have focused laws on dealing with the issue of revenge porn targeting women. Further, the socio-economic conditions of these countries being quite the similar, it may be noted that women victims of revenge porn may neither prefer to seek police help due to fear of reputation damage. This chapter therefore aims to research as whether the application of Therapeutic Jurisprudence in such cases may benefit the victims.

In the last few years, many countries have introduced laws combating the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’. While new laws criminalising this practice represent a positive step forwards, the legislative response has been piecemeal and typically focuses only on the practices of vengeful ex-partners. Drawing on Liz Kelly’s (Surviving sexual violence. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1988) pioneering work, we suggest that ‘revenge porn’ should be understood as just one form of a range of gendered, sexualised forms of abuse which have common characteristics, forming what we are conceptualising as the ‘continuum of image-based sexual abuse’. Further, we argue that image-based sexual abuse is on a continuum with other forms of sexual violence. We suggest that this twin approach may enable a more comprehensive legislative and policy response that, in turn, will better reflect the harms to victim-survivors and lead to more appropriate and effective educative and preventative strategies.

Revenge pornography (hereafter, revenge porn) is the online, sometimes offline, non-consensual distribution or sharing, of explicit images of someone else by ex-partners, partners, others or hackers seeking revenge or entertainment – also referred to as non-consensual pornography. The vast majority of revenge porn is committed by men on women ex-partners. In this paper, we discursively analyse men’s electronic texts accompanying their posting of explicit images on arguably the most popular revenge porn-specific website MyEx.com. Situating our analysis as a contemporary form of online gendered violence and abuse, we show the complex ways in which manhood acts are invoked by men to account for their practices. The impacts on victims/survivors and possible interventions are also discussed.

This article argues that the Australian Parliament should provide victims of revenge pornography with a victim focused response to enable the fast removal of intimate images from the internet and to mitigate the harm that the ongoing public access to the images can cause. Part I outlines the reasons why revenge pornography has created anew problem for the law. Part II addresses the existing legal remedies and Part III outlines the different approaches that the Australian Parliament could plausibly adopt.It argues that while criminal laws and civil remedies may assist, they do not provide efficient remedies for victims. The article concludes that the Australian Parliament should extend the powers of the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner to deal with adult victims as well as child victims and thereby facilitate the fast removal of revenge pornography from the internet. Refereed/Peer-reviewed