New 'Revenge Porn' Law May Do Little To Stop Your Naked Pics Going Viral

The California Assembly is discussing a new anti-"revenge porn" law that would make it illegal to publish sexy photos, even if they were taken with the consent of both parties at the time.

The intent of the law is to stop people — men, mostly — from publishing online pictures of their former partners in an attempt to humiliate them. Crucially, the text of the bill currently states that publishing these photos will become illegal even if they were taken with the consent of the naked person in them (emphasis added):

This bill would provide that any person who photographs or records by any means the image of another, identifiable person with his or her consent who is in a state of full or partial undress ...

That language would mean that even if a woman sent a sexy pic to her boyfriend, the law would ban the boyfriend from publishing the photo online.

So far, so good.

But then the law requires a test of the publisher's intent:

... and subsequently distributes the image taken, with the intent to cause serious emotional distress, and the other person suffers serious emotional distress would constitute disorderly conduct subject to that same punishment.

That means that to successfully prosecute a person under the law, authorities would have to prove that the publisher intended to hurt the person in the photo, and there would have to be evidence that the person in the photo was harmed by the publication.

Those are some significant hurdles, which would only apply to the most serious cases.

In other words, if your ex shared your sexts with his friends he probably still wouldn't be breaking the law, under the bill as proposed, unless you also had some good evidence — like an incriminating email — that he was doing it to be mean.

Stick to Snapchat, in other words.