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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 feminist discourses are both popular and contested, this research explores the extent to which feminist ideas are influencing activism against online harassment. This research centers on a network of activists located in the United States who seek to combat one form of online sexual harassment: non-consensual pornography. Using reflexive thematic analysis, this research asks: how do activists relate to feminist perspectives, issues and approaches? Data analysis reveals among activists a flexible feminist politics that structures the scope and scale of their work. Ultimately, their caring, expansive and institutionally focused approach has enabled these activists to successfully address non-consensual pornography at the legislative and regulatory level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are several challenges facing criminal justice stakeholders with the emergence of this form of criminality, aptly termed "nonconsensual pornography." The current study will examine the management and experiences of a newer form of cybercrime, non consensual pornography, by an imperative category of criminal justice stakeholders: county and district prosecutor offices in the United States. With data collected from electronic surveys, this exploratory study will investigate the frequency these offices are experiencing nonconsensual pornography cases, and any significant factors that affect the sanctions administered by the court system. Results indicated prosecutor offices experienced revenge pornography crimes more so than any other form of nonconsensual pornography. In addition, the results from both quantitative models indicated more years of practice of law in a current state increased the likelihood of revenge pornography cases prosecuted receiving a sanction of incarceration and/or fine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Free speech protection under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is arguably one of the most essential rights that U.S. citizens hold. Since the founding of this country, a tension has existed between the government's protection of free speech and an individual's right to privacy. The Internet exacerbated this tension by providing an accessible avenue for the dissemination of private images for all to see. Nonconsensual pornography and "revenge porn" are at the epicenter of this issue. Today, one in twelve adults in the United States will become a victim of nonconsensual pornography during their lifetime. Despite the pervasive role of nonconsensual pornography in modern society, most existing state criminal laws are narrowly drawn and, as a result, fail to protect most victims from these devastating attacks. State efforts to pass statutes that provide more comprehensive protections to victims' privacy are routinely frustrated by constitutional challenges under the First Amendment. This Note discusses the two most prominent types of criminal nonconsensual pornography laws--harassment-based statutes and privacy-based statutes--and explores the intersection between these laws and the First Amendment. This Note argues that, to sufficiently protect all victims of nonconsensual pornography, states must adopt privacy-based laws with no intent-to-harm provisions. Finally, this Note argues that these privacy-based statutes do not violate the Constitution, because they make permissible content-neutral restrictions on speech that should survive intermediate scrutiny when challenged under the First Amendment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revenge porn has become an epidemic in the United States in recent years. A debate among legislators has emerged, focused primarily on the question of whether to criminalize the phenomenon, with most states having already done so, based on the grave harm that revenge porn inflicts on victims and the ease of distributing it. However, the conceptual questions of how to categorize the offense, and why, have not received much attention. Contrary to the prevailing approaches in the United States, which sporadically define revenge porn as an infringement of privacy, as obscenity, or as some other offense, this Essay proposes, for the first time, theoretical grounds for categorizing it as a sex offense. This novel, though possibly controversial, reconceptualization more accurately reflects the social values that are violated by the phenomenon, more correctly labels the behavior of the offender, and more succinctly recognizes the nature of the harm inflicted on the victim. Categorizing revenge porn as a sex offense has not only theoretical but also practical implications, both for victims and released sex offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the decision of Vermont Supreme Court in the case State v. VanBuren wherein Court held dismissal of a prosecution under Vermont's revenge porn statute, holding that a woman had no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding naked photos she sent to a man with whom she was not in a relationship. It mentions court constructed an underprotective standard that departs from the statutory text and threatens to distort the privacy analysis at victims' expense of criminal law.

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 sexually explicit images are not safe with intimate partners and that sexts may be re-distributed as nonconsensual pornography, often referred to as revenge porn. Revenge porn refers to situations where a sexually explicit image and/or video of a person is electronically distributed on a media platform without the depicted individual's permission. Research indicates that 60% of individuals in a relationship have forwarded their partners' sexually explicit photograph(s). Employing a content analysis, the current study examined revenge porn statutes in the United States. The findings indicate that perpetrators are often protected through a lack of federal regulations. More specifically, the review highlights diversity in revenge pornography legislation, which may lead to issues in prosecution and remedies available to victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the ability of the legal environment to address the harm caused by nonconsensual pornography to its victims. Topics discussed are consequences of nonconsensual pornography, damages suffered by revenge porn victims, regulations and their limitations including Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Federal Copyright Law, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Common Law Tort Claims such as privacy and emotional distress, anti-blackmail and anti-hacking statutes.

Smartphones and similar technologies have allowed individuals to take pictures of naked medical patients, showering athletes, and sexual partners and place those pictures, without their subjects' permission, on the Internet. Illicit distribution of former partners' photographs, known as "revenge pom," has received the most attention. Many states have criminalized the practice, but their laws likely violate the First Amendment. Because these laws typically cannot be used against websites or other distributers, these laws cannot stop compromising images' online proliferation. This Article is the first to argue that publicity rights provide a better remedy. These rights typically attach to celebrity features, such as Greta Garbo's face, which have market value, and therefore have been overlooked as a remedy for revenge pom. But, the profusion of Internet pom sites demonstrates there are interested eyeballs for almost anyone's naked body. Because these eyeballs can be leveraged into Internet advertising and promotional revenue, they create a financial interest that the right of publicity can protect. In contrast to criminal sanctions, publicity rights offer an efficient private remedy for revenge pom as well as unconsented to naked photographs from the locker room or hospital. Unlike other forms of liability, publicity rights fall outside the Communications Decency Act's immunity and thus can be used against websites and subsequent image distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central aim of online abuse is to silence victims. That effort is as regrettable as it is successful. In the face of cyberharassment and sexualprivacy invasions, women and marginalized groups retreat from online engagement. These documented chilling effects, however, are not inevitable. Beyond its deterrent function, the law has an equally important expressive role. In this Article, we highlight law's capacity to shape social norms and behavior through education. We focus on a neglected dimension of law's expressive role: its capacity to empower victims to express their truths and engage with others. Our argument is theoretical and empirical. We present new empirical research showing cyberharassment law's salutary effects on women's online expression. We then consider the implications of those findings for victims of sexual-privacy invasions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how revenge porn victims are protected under the U.S. criminal justice system, particularly the efforts by the U.S. Congress and state governments to create laws and strengthen criminal statutes, respectively. Other topics include the ideal victim theory, the proposal to limit victim-blaming evidence admissibility in criminal proceedings, as well as the proposed criminalization of revenge porn.

The advent of the technological boom brought the world smartphones, social media, and Siri. These novel benefits, however, were accompanied by unchartered invasions of privacy. Congress has embarked on the seemingly endless path of protecting its constituents through civil and criminal legislation aimed at combatting such invasions. Two recent examples include the Intimate Privacy Protection Act ("IPPA") and the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act ("GPS Act"). Nonetheless, the IPPA, which was proposed to criminalize the dissemination of nonconsensual pornography, has garnered much less support-and much more criticism-than its geolocational counterpart. This Note discusses the striking similarities of both bills, both practically and elementally. The criminality of both bills turns on the issue of contextual consent. Why then do we see such discrepancies in support? The answer may lie in both legal and societal justifications behind privacy protections, suggesting that some forms of privacy warrant more protections than others. Hence, the privacy hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article considers the impact of a hypothetical nonconsensual pornography victim's previous sexual history on potential legal remedies, both criminal and civil. Due to jury bias and the difficulty in proving standard elements of many claims, the research shows that such a victim would likely be unsuccessful in court. This Article then turns to two legal concepts from related fields--the incremental harm doctrine and rape shield laws--and considers what effect their application would have on the hypothetical victim's case. Ultimately, the author presents an argument for the logical expansion of rape shield laws to cases of nonconsensual pornography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revenge pom refers to the display and dissemination of a person's sexually explicit images without his or her consent. Amid a rise in revenge pom, victims and attorneys have employed an assortment of legal remedies to protect victims and punish perpetrators. Tort, copyright, and criminal laws provide victims with promising protections, but serious deficiencies render them inadequate tools to eradicate the crime. Additionally, both tort and criminal revenge pom laws may encounterfree speech challenges, which are likely to succeed under Supreme Court precedent. In Florida Star v. B. J. F. the Court greatly limited the privacy rights of sexual abuse victims in the face of First Amendment concerns. Despite Florida Star, personal identifying information (PII) is afforded increasingly robust protection under the umbrella of information privacy without running afoul of the First Amendment. The limited effect of Florida Star on information privacy laws can be traced to concerns over the increased exposure of private information due to technological innovations that allow such information to be more easily processed and more widely shared. As with the sharing of PII, the Internet plays an incontrovertible role in revenge porn due to its ability to amplify the audience and create an enduring record of the injury. Because intimate images fit within congressional approaches to defining PII and the themes justifying information privacy, this Comment advocates the treatment of intimate images as PII. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of revenge porn in relation to legal notions of privacy and consent rights. Topics include the work of the organization Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), the views of the organization American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in relation to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and problems with the connotations of the word revenge.

Nonconsensual pornography causes dramatic and, in some cases, irreversible harm to the victim. Beyond the obvious embarrassment suffered, victims are often threatened with bodily harm, fired from their jobs, or forced to change their names. Some have been driven to suicide. Today, intimate photo-sharing among partners is common, and not coincidentally, revenge porn postings are on the rise. In the absence of relevant criminal statutes, perpetrators are rarely held accountable for their actions and victims are rarely remedied. “In the real world, civil lawsuits are no remedy at all,” says Mitchell Matorin, an attorney who has represented revenge porn victims. Civil litigation is costly, and even if a lawyer is willing to take on a case, the harms inflicted on revenge porn victims often do not fit nicely into existing legal theories of remediable injury. To address this problem, twenty-seven states have enacted laws that criminalize the distribution of nonconsensual pornography. However, these state laws vary in scope, and they often contain loopholes, such as prohibiting prosecution when the images originated as “selfies,” or requiring a specific motive of the perpetrator. This leaves too many victims without a remedy. One state, Illinois, has crafted a law that addresses these failings. The Non-Consensual Dissemination of Private Sexual Images statute in the Illinois Criminal Code allows a revenge porn victim to recover damages no matter the origin of the images, and requires only an intent to disseminate the image rather than an intent to cause harm. This Article argues that lawmakers should adopt a federal criminal statute modeled after Illinois’ in order to prevent perpetrators of revenge porn from slipping through the cracks of inadequate state law. Part II describes how revenge porn has become a widespread problem within the United States, explaining why it should legally be considered a form of sexual abuse and addressing common misconceptions regarding consent in the context of personal-information sharing. Part III discusses the current lack of legal remedies available to revenge porn victims, and finally, Part IV proposes a comprehensive amendment to the United States Code aimed at closing common loopholes in revenge porn laws and providing victims with the recognition and remedies they deserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issues of revenge porn as sexual harassment in the U.S., and discusses the legislations made for addressing the same. Topics discussed include evaluation of arguments posed by attorneys Danielle Citron and Mary Anne Franks against enacting revenge porn statutes over criminalization; impact of revenge porn with traditional forms of sexual harassment on U.S. Constitution First Amendment; and Bartnicki v. Vopper court case on same.

The ease of access to the Internet, coupled with the modern practice of sharing intimate digital photos between lovers, has given rise to a disturbing new trend known colloquially as "revenge porn"— that is, the nonconsensual posting of images that were originally given to another with the implied expectation of confidentiality. That act involves a deep personal betrayal and can inflict serious emotional damage on the person whose image has been shared, sometimes resulting in grave consequences to the victim. And once those images reach the Internet, they are often circulated widely; the victims retain no control over who may view or share them. This Article explores the types of laws that victims could use to seek justice, and it identifies relevant hurdles to relief. Several state tort laws, such as invasion of privacy, false light portrayal, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, could be used to combat revenge porn. Contract law may also provide a remedy through breachof- implied-agreement claims or the collateral doctrine of promissory estoppel. Some states have recently gone so far as to enact criminal statutes penalizing the practice of revenge porn, focusing on the victim's lack of consent. Of course, the mere existence of a criminal law does not guarantee its enforcement, and such laws do not offer victims the possibility of being awarded damages. Moreover, as of yet, there have been no successful prosecutions under these statutes, so we do not know how they will be construed or will fare in court. There are obstacles that a revenge porn victim must overcome. A defendant's likely defense of consent could nullify such claims. In addition, the First Amendment Free Speech Clause will be said to impose an obstacle if a revenge porn victim seeks civil relief or if the government initiates a criminal prosecution. In fact, some would contend that no tort suit or prosecution could ever be successful. The argument would be that the First Amendment protects an individual against civil or criminal liability for publishing a lawfully obtained image honestly depicting the photographer's subject, regardless of how unflattering the photograph may be or the effect that publication may have on the subject. This Article, however, explains why consent and First Amendment defenses should be unsuccessful. Ultimately, the Article maintains, the law must adapt to the "selfie" and "sexting" generation in order to provide meaningful relief to individuals whose wellintentioned— albeit ill-advised—attempts at flirtation achieve perpetual—and unwanted—fame and notoriety on the Internet. Intimate photographs are shared under circumstances giving rise to an implied agreement of confidentiality between the parties, and the Free Speech Clause does not shield a recipient against his broken promise not to share a photograph with others. Imposing tort and criminal liability on someone who breaches an agreement of confidentiality will not chill protected speech. It will only encourage people to keep their word. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigate the effect of revenge porn, an act of sharing sexually explicit media online without the consent of the pictured individual, on its victims and discusses how society has treated predominately female-felt crimes inflicted by partners. Topics discussed include tangible and abstract effects that victims of revenge porn experience; legal remedies available to revenge porn victims in the U.S.; and need of regulations targeted at revenge porn in the country.

The article discusses the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in relation to revenge pornography which involves the distribution of sexually explicit photographs and videos on the Internet without the consent of the person or persons depicted in the images and videos. Sexting and the relationship between digital technology and the law are examined. Free speech and press guarantees in the U.S. are assessed, as well as pornography laws in America.