Evaluating New York’s ‘Revenge Porn’ Law: A Missed Opportunity to Protect Sexual Privacy

Abstract

Six years after lawmakers first considered the issue of nonconsensual pornography, New York has criminalized the practice. We wholeheartedly support the effort in our role as legal scholars and as advocates for the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). One of us (Franks) drafted the first model statute criminalizing “revenge porn” and worked on New York’s original effort to address the abuse in 2013. Together, in 2014, we wrote the first law review article calling for the criminalization of “revenge porn.” But our enthusiasm for New York’s long overdue step in joining 42 other states and D.C. in prohibiting nonconsensual pornography is tempered by our view that the statute falls short in failing to conceive the problem as involving sexual privacy.

Keywords: revenge porn, nonconsensual pornography, privacy, civil rights, Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, cyber crime