We reported back in August that the California State Assembly was debating on a bill that aimed to classify “revenge porn” as a criminal misdemeanor. There are a plethora of revenge porn websites on the internet which host content provided by vindictive ex-lovers. Today, California governor Jerry Brown has signed the bill into law. Revenge porn distributors may now face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. With the passage of this bill, California has become the second state in the U.S. to ban the act of putting intimate content of an ex on the internet in a bid to humiliate them. The first is New Jersey, which classifies revenge porn as a felony.
The bill, SB 255, only covers the photos or videos that are taken by the offender, not that are sent to them. So a victim will essentially have no legal recourse under this law if they themselves had sent the compromising content. Still, it provides victims with a legal framework that was previously absent. Videos and pictures that show a person in the state of “partial undress in any area in which the person being photographed or recorded has a reasonable expectation of privacy,” classify as revenge porn under SB 255.
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