Long-awaited payoff for activists who have seen extortion-like sites mushroom.
by Joe Mullin
The governor of California has signed Senate Bill 255, which will make the posting of "revenge porn" a crime.
Revenge porn made headlines this year; the success of Hunter Moore's IsAnybodyUp spawned even more tasteless sites like IsAnybodyDown, founded by Craig Brittain. That site, which has been taken down, ran on an extortion-like business model. Nude pictures were posted with identifying information, without the consent of the subjects. The only way to get the photos down was to make a payment, which was apparently going to the owner of the site, Craig Brittain—although Brittain denied that to the end.
In California, anyone distributing nude photos online with an "intent to harass or annoy" can now face six months in jail as well as a $1,000 fine. The bill was signed yesterday and goes into effect immediately.
"Until now, there was no tool for law enforcement to protect victims,” said the bill's sponsor, state senator Anthony Cannella, a Republican from a district in California's central valley. “Too many have had their lives upended because of an action of another that they trusted.”
Cannella's wrote in a statement that "revenge porn often begins when relationships end." Sometimes, private consensual photos can get shared and used in ways that the subject never foresaw.
Revenge porn sites typically used Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as a shield, arguing they could not be held liable for invasive material posted by users. The ACLU had opposed the California bill, arguing it might restrict free speech rights, according to an Associated Press report.
Florida lawmakers considered a similar law earlier this year but did not enact it, according to AP.
The prevalence of revenge porn has spawned activism to get more bills like California's passed into law.
Courtesy: arstechnica
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