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Albany Is Coming For Your Revenge Porn, You Sick Bastard
By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 4, 2013
Modified Oct 4, 2013
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By
John Del Signore
Published Oct 4, 2013
Modified Oct 4, 2013
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A trio of state lawmakers are leading a charge to criminalize revenge porn, an increasingly widespread phenomenon in which some sick parasite you once dated publishes sexually explicit photos of you online, taken with your consent back when you two were, regrettably, a couple. It's currently not a crime in New York to publicize such images, but a new anti-revenge porn law in California has motivated two New York state senators and an assemblymen to introduce legislation criminalizing it.
There are entire websites devoted to this shit—the most infamous was IsAnyoneUp, which made degenerate coke fiend Hunter Moore very rich (here's a terrific Rolling Stone profile on him). And so State Senator Phil Boyle, a Suffolk County Republican, has introduced legislation that would make disclosing sexually explicit images without the subject's consent a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Assemblyman Edward C. Braunstein, a Democrat from Bayside, and Sen. Joseph A. Griffo, an upstate Republican, have introduced similar legislation with a stiffer fine—$30,000. Here's an excerpt from their press release:
Senator Griffo said, “This so-called phenomena of ‘cyber-revenge,’ is a tawdry form of exploitation. From what we know, the majority of its victims are women who don’t know that their images and likenesses has been bartered and sold over the internet. Currently, these victims have limited options when their pictures taken with their consent, were posted online. They would have to enlist a lawyer and threaten to sue the person responsible for sharing the photo or the website hosting them, for invasion of privacy. New Jersey and California have laws addressing this problem, we’re advocating that New York should be the third.”
Mary Anne Franks, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law, who helped draft this legislation, stated, “This bill sends the strong message that New York will not tolerate this devastating form of virtual sexual assault. Additionally, this bill demonstrates that it is possible to clearly prohibit a narrow category of malicious conduct while respecting legitimate First Amendment concerns.”
New York’s current distribution of unlawful surveillance law only governs photographs taken without the subject’s consent. This bill would govern photographs that are captured consensually, as part of an intimate relationship, with the expectation of privacy, and are later disclosed by an individual to the public without the consent of the individual photographed.
Criminalization is preferable to civil suits by victims because civil suits do not deter those who upload or disclose new images after a civil suit has ended. Furthermore, a lengthy trial is emotionally exhausting and prohibitively expensive. Moreover, the websites that distribute non-consensual pornography are given broad immunity for civil liability under federal law through the Communications Decency Act. Therefore, criminalizing disclosure of these photos may prevent websites from benefiting from the harmful images.
Fair enough, but these politicians better not even think about banning our Emetophilia vom-porn. Hunter Moore, unsurprisingly, thinks legislators' attempt to criminalize revenge porn is doomed to fail. "These stupid old white people are even more stupid to think they can stop it,” Moore told The Register. "We are animals. We are sexual. Maybe they need a class on reality: don't give your kid a phone."
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people suck
Porn
revenge porn
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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