It took New York five long years, but finally, the state passed a bill that will make revenge porn illegal across the state. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo supports the bill, which would make New York the 42nd state to pass a revenge porn law.
The law will allow victims to sue anyone who shares explicit or intimate photos of them without consent, an offense punishable by up to one year in prison. Per the New York Times, the law would also be the first in the nation to “allow judges to order websites or social media platforms — in addition to the original poster — to take down the photos or videos.” The law would also apply to minors, who would appear before a Family Court judge.
The bill is one of several that Democrats, now the majority in New York’s state legislature, pushed through after Republicans blocked the bill in previous years.
Brooklyn lawyer Carrie Goldberg, who was once harassed by an ex online and now represents victims of revenge porn and sexual violence, celebrated the bill’s passage. “I’ve prepared to give this speech five times over five years,” she said at a press conference. “Sexual privacy is just a fundamental right.”
DISCUSSION
The law will allow victims to sue anyone who shares explicit or intimate photos of them without consent, an offense punishable by up to one year in prison.
This has always been a question of mind regarding revenge porn, how do you prove it? How do you prove that a person really did post photos of someone else that were sent to them in confidentiality without their consent? And this law opens up another question as well: how will they be able to differentiate from actual instances of revenge porn, and instances of scorned people just being petty enough to get someone in trouble because they didn’t get their feelings returned mutually?