Holly Jacobs, the woman who has been pushing for laws to end so-called “revenge porn,” said a bill signed into law by California’s governor on Oct. 2 is good but doesn’t do enough.
Jacobs tried to keep a relationship going with her boyfriend after she moved to a different city than him to go to graduate school, including exchanging intimate photos and videos.
But the relationship didn’t last. Jacobs thought it had ended for good, but about a month after the break-up, she started finding nude pictures of her online.
Her ex-boyfriend posted personal information and also posted photos and videos on so-called “revenge porn” websites, where a jilted lover can post intimate multimedia and personal information about an ex, reports WLRN.
The new California law makes it illegal to distribute private images with the intent to harass or annoy. Convicted perpetrators face six months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine if they violate the law.
Jacobs said in a statement that the law is an “encouraging first step,” but doesn’t do enough to protect victims who shared photos with exes.
She said the almost 80 percent of photos posted of victims out of revenge were shared with their exes and meant to be private.
The California law “only addresses images taken or recorded by other individuals, which means that it fails to cover ’self-shots,' ” she said.
She said that she will continue to push for state and federal laws banning revenge porn.
Marry Anne Franks, a professor at the University Of Miami School Of Law, is also critical of the law.
“The first problem is that the way that it’s written suggests that people who take pictures of themselves would not be protected by this law, only people who have other people take pictures of them,” Franks says.
Andrew Sellars, staff attorney with the Digital Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, told NBC that sometimes private photographs shared in public are for the public good.
“There are times when intimate, private photographs would be of legitimate interest to the public, such as when they are taken by public officials in a way that calls into question their fitness for office,” he said.
