The courageous voices of thousands of revenge porn victims have finally been heard.
A bill outlawing the practice passed the state Assembly’s Codes Committee on Thursday, putting it on the fast track to Gov. Cuomo’s desk after five years of protracted debates, countless revisions and the diligent lobbying of advocates and elected officials.
First introduced in 2013 by Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside), the bill is finally ready for a floor vote after being held up in the Codes Committee for the last half decade over concerns of freedom of speech infringements. Braunstein told The Post he was able to reach an agreement with them and is expecting the bill to pass both the Assembly and state Senate without issue.
“The advancement of this legislation through the Codes Committee is a major step forward in ensuring that New York State will no longer tolerate revenge porn. [It’s] a widespread problem that has caused severe emotional pain to thousands of victims, some of whom have committed suicide,” Braunstein said.
“We’ve heard stories from some of the advocates, which are usually about women, where they encounter intimate pictures of them posted online, a lot of the times by jealous ex-boyfriends, and they have no remedy for relief. For the first time, victims of revenge porn would be able to contact local law enforcement… this would disincentivize people to engage in that type of activity.”
The bill would make the nonconsensual dissemination of sexually explicit images a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and would finally bring New York in line with 40 other states who’ve outlawed the practice.
Following a Post expose on revenge porn, Cuomo promised in this year’s State of the State address to crack down on the practice and make sentences punishable by up to 15 years in prison and require certain perpetrators to register as a sex offender. He proposed the passage in his budget but it didn’t make it into the final version.Braunstein’s bill is considerably lighter in penalties but it does include a civil cause of action, which would allow the court to petition websites to remove the image or any identifying information. Getting intimate images removed from the web has proved extremely difficult in the past because of the Communications Decency Act, which doesn’t hold internet service providers or websites liable for the content their users post.
To get images removed, victims were forced to photograph their breasts and other nude parts of their bodies and send the images to the U.S. Copyright Office so the websites would be forced to remove the image or be at risk of copyright infringement. Other times, the websites charged exorbitant amounts to have the images removed, exploiting the vulnerable position of victims.
Braunstein said his bill would “make it a lot easier” to petition a court to have the images removed and it also includes a private right of action so a victim could seek damages for lost wages, emotional distress and other losses.
The law would also apply to threats of distribution because many times, victims are blackmailed and coerced into doing terrible things because someone is threatening to send their naked pictures to their family and employers.
Carrie Goldberg, the country’s leading “sextortion” attorney who was also a victim of the act, helped Braunstein craft the law.
“As somebody who’s been fighting for this legislation for five years, before people even gave a damn about sexual privacy, this is an emotional moment,” Goldberg told The Post.“My clients faced extreme backlash after naked images of them were spread around the internet — often, but not always, by a jilted ex. They had no way of getting control of the images back after they were published online. Their Google results were doomed. Some lost jobs, [others] were blackmailed and stalked by strangers. All suffered extreme emotional distress.”
She said the current version of the bill is “far from perfect” because it includes an “intent to harm” clause, an addition the Codes Committee pushed for and wouldn’t budge on.
“The problem is that intent is hard to prove,” Goldberg, who has fought revenge porn and sextortion cases on the civil level, said.
“Plus, those things actually relate to a person’s motive — not their intent. ‘Material harm’ is also difficult to prove. Even more importantly, I have lots of cases where the offender’s intent is something else — to brag to his friends, to make money from a website, to make fun of somebody, even boredom.”
The bill states perpetrators must’ve sought harm against the victim in order to be found guilty.
Still, she lauded Braunstein for “tenaciously” fighting for victims and for propelling the legislation forward.
Senators Joseph Griffo and Phil Boyle have agreed to pick up the legislation in the senate and will be introducing it over the next few days. Boyle expects full support and said it will “definitely” pass before the end of the session.