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Policing Revenge Porn: Social, Practical and Legal Boundaries. Written by: Lotus Poel

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The rise of revenge porn

The website IsAnyoneUp was created in 2010, and is often seen as the original revenge porn website. The creator of the website – Hunter Moore – allowed any member of the public to submit sexually explicit pictures to be posted on the website, often along with the pictured individual’s personal information, gaining over 500 million views and thousands of dollars in ad revenue (Poole, 2015; Levendowski, 2014). In 2014, Moore was indicted for identity theft and conspiracy to hack into personal e-mail accounts for the purpose of acquiring the explicit pictures, and in 2015 IsAnyoneUp and other similar websites were removed from the internet. The lack of adequate legislation at the time made the journey to indict Moore tougher than it should have been. Luckily, since 2013, revenge porn has been criminalised in many countries. Legislation is still developing in an attempt to keep up with the rapid developments and anonymity offenders are often operating under, and policing organisations often struggle with a lack of resources to address these issues.

What is revenge porn?

Revenge pornography can be defined as the non-consensual sharing of sexually explicit pictures or video material. This can refer to material taken with or without the consent of the pictured individual, shared to one or several online platforms without knowledge and/or consent of that pictured individual (Levendowski, 2014). This type of ‘porn’ tends to be distributed following the end of a relationship, hence the name ‘revenge porn’ (Richardson, 2012). 

Policing revenge porn

Since its criminalisation, reporting victimisation of revenge porn to the public police has become easier. It can be reported online, over the phone, or in person. However, the explicit nature of the material can mean that victims are ashamed to discuss what has happened to them, let alone to tell the police. This often stops people from reporting it at all, either leaving victims suffering in silence, or attempting to deal with it personally with the offender. The latter can turn out dangerous due to the anger and/or aggression often present between ex-partners in situations involving revenge porn. Also, individuals that do report victimisation to the public police discuss feeling a lack of support (Short et al., 2017). This is mirrored in debates concerning the development of policing, political or legal responses to the issue, where individuals have often expressed their disagreement with revenge porn with a victim-blaming tone, one law professor even advising to simply “[not] take nude photos or videos” (Goldman, 2014).

On top of this formal procedure, there are many ‘helplines’ and websites for victims of revenge porn with tips on how to proceed. For example, on The Cyber Helpline’s website there are eight steps listed to take after the content has been shared. Noticeably, six of these are steps for the victim (or friends and family of the victim) to take themselves, such as applying to remove the content from various browsers or contacting the website on which the content was shared. 

Several forms of policing this issue can be seen in these tips. Firstly, these steps being taken by a victim represent a part of policing this issue also known as ‘self-policing’, whereby a community takes steps to protect themselves. Secondly, companies that provide online services can provide opportunities to take certain content down (Sebastian, 2017). For example, a vice president of Google stated that Google would be removing content of individuals whose privacy had been violated by the publishing of explicit content without their consent (Singhal, 2015). Due to the complexities within cyberspace, this use of plural policing is most likely to be effective against revenge porn than singular policing. Individuals and companies take steps to protect themselves and their cybersecurity, and incidents are reported to the public police, who will investigate and prosecute the offenders.

Policing in modern cyberspace: challenges

A major obstacle when policing and investigating revenge porn is the rapidly developing online world. For example, if an individual uploads revenge porn to a certain platform using a VPN, this alters their digital footprint and blurs their real location and identity. This complicates investigations aiming to find out an offender’s identity. Similar techniques regarding anonymity and rerouting are continuously developing and hackers are quickly adapting their skills to avoid liability. Retraining and further education to keep up with these developments is expensive and labour-intensive for organisations, and increases the workload tremendously (Harkin et al., 2018). Thus, a lack of resources can cause policing agencies to stay behind technological advancements and struggle to police revenge porn.

A further obstacle to identifying revenge porn sharers and traffickers is privacy legislation. When a policing organisation is investigating the non-consensual posting or spreading of sexual imagery, digital footprints are often the key to identifying individuals. However, privacy legislation often prevents the police from being able to access personal information (Bryce & Klang, 2009). This can be due to (inter)national legislation and/or company policy. This demonstrates the trouble in balancing the right to privacy with the investigation or protection of individuals. 

Furthermore, the public police is restricted by guidelines that are either set nationally or at state-level. These guidelines aim to protect individuals from the state, ensure transparency, and prevent the abuse of power. However, it also restrains the movements of the police in investigations. In combatting revenge porn, there are often legal and bureaucratic constraints that prevent the police from accessing certain information. Levendowski (2014) discusses how Section 230 of the United States Communications Decency Act protects revenge porn traffickers from liability. This Section protects free speech online and describes how the views of an individual are not the responsibility or property of the service on which they were published. While initial perpetrators of revenge porn may be named by victims and prosecuted, platforms that share linked and reproduced versions of the content are thus protected from liability. This emphasises the need for plural policing, as public policing organisations’ frameworks may restrict them in ways that private policing organisations or individuals would not be restricted.

Conclusion: plural policing of revenge porn

All in all, policing organisations – especially public ones – usually lack the resources to address revenge porn. This is due to both rapid technological developments and the legal constraints under which they have to operate. The need for plural policing becomes clear throughout the topic of policing revenge porn as individual steps, formal criminal justice elements, and private policing institutions (in- and outside of online companies) can form a system to police revenge porn as effectively as possible.


 

Bibliography

Bryce, J., & Klang, M. (2009). Young people, disclosure of personal information and online privacy: Control, choice and consequences. Information security technical report, 14(3), 160-166.

Goldman, E. (2014, March 13). What Should We Do About Revenge Porn Sites Like Texxxan? Retrieved March 2023, from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2013/01/28/what-should-we-do-about-revenge-porn-sites-like- texxxan/

Harkin, D., Whelan, C., & Chang, L. (2018). The challenges facing specialist police cyber-crime units: An empirical analysis. Police Practice and Research, 19(6), 519-536.

Levendowski, A. (2014). Using copyright to combat revenge porn. New York University Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law, 3(2), 422-446.

Poole, E. (2015). Fighting Back against Non-Consensual Pornography. University of San Francisco Law Review, 49(1), 181-214.

Richardson, J. (2012). If I Cannot Have Her Everybody Can: Sexual Disclosure and Privacy Law. (J. Richardson, & E. Rackley, Eds.) Abingdon & New York, US: Routledge.

Sebastian, M. (2017). Privacy and consent: the trouble with the label of 'revenge porn'. Feminist Media Studies, 17(6), 1107-1111.

Short, E., Brown, A., Pitchford, M., & Barnes, J. (2017). Revenge porn: Findings from the harassment and revenge porn (HARP) survey - preliminary results. Annual Review of CyberTherapy and Telemedicine, 15, 161-166.

Singhal, A. (2015). Revenge Porn and Search. Google Public Policy Blog, 19.

 

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