“Revenge Porn” now illegal in England and Wales

ByCraig Haley

Posting intimate material of former lovers is to become a criminal offence in both England and Wales, with offenders facing a potential 2 year jail sentence.

An amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill has been passed that deals specifically with the actions revolving around the world of revenge porn,

This includes posting offending material to revenge porn websites, spreading it across social media or through phone messages, and even distributed the material in the physical world. All of which will be made illegal.

The amendment classes revenge porn material as…

“photographs or films which show people engaged in sexual activity or depicted in a sexual way or with their genitals exposed, where what is shown would not usually be seen in public”

Previously, victims of revenge porn have had to rely on ill-equipped legislation in the Malicious Communications Act of 2003 or even had to resort to meagre copyright infringement cases to get offending material removed, which they often weren’t.

With the new laws soon to take place, victims of revenge porn can now rely on laws made especially for these types of incidents, which will ideally mean a swifter and more exact response from law enforcement.

Other countries around the world are making progress too. The United States has had several states over the last few years amend their respective state laws to include specifically the crime of revenge porn, though there is currently no federal law.

It’s certainly a step in the right direction, but will this spell the end of this trending phenomena? An inherent problem lawmakers have when it comes to creating cyber-laws and policing the Internet is that the World Wide Web has no international borders. Many revenge porn websites operate outside of the UK in countries with little laws prohibiting such actions, so getting content removed from these sites will still prove troublesome.

There are also other worries, including the prospect that this new law will essentially criminalise many people who have posted material in the past.

In England in Wales, we will have to wait and see if this new legislation and the new penalties given to offenders will act as a effective deterrent.

What do you think? Will this latest amendment act as an effective deterrent in England and Wales? And what do you think of the current state of laws in the country you live in? Let us know below.

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