A women’s rights group has called for the definition of “revenge porn” to be broadened in Taiwan to allow the preventive deletion of sensitive photographs in the possession of a former lover, as was ordered in a German court.
The Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation said the ruling “marks a milestone for efforts by many countries seeking to prevent revenge porn.”
In a German Supreme Court ruling published on Dec. 21, the court ordered a photographer to delete all explicit pictures of his former girlfriend in his possession, even though he had shown no intention of publicly displaying the images.
The court said he did not have the right to keep the photographs, even though she had consented to him taking them when they were in a relationship.
“Revenge porn” involves the dissemination of sexually explicit photographs or video footage of another person without their consent, usually to embarrass the person after a relationship has ended.
However, the German ruling goes a step further, prohibiting a person from possessing explicit images of former lovers, even if the materials are not in the public domain. The foundation said in a statement that it hoped Taiwan would follow suit.
The group, which set up a Web site in February last year to help female victims of revenge porn, said many women feel helpless when trying to get their former partners to delete explicit photographs through the judicial process because of the limitations of existing laws.
“If the other party has not issued threats or spread [the photographs], it does not constitute a criminal offense or civil tort, so there is no way to use public authority to make the other person delete sensitive images,” the group said.
“Women involved in such cases have not yet been exposed, but they can suffer from emotional insecurity over a long time, leading to anxiety and helplessness because the intimate images could be exposed one day,” the foundation said.
The group said that Taiwan should consider following the example set by the German court and establish a mechanism to legalize preventive deletion of photographs to offer greater protection to women in a similar predicament.
About 96 percent of revenge porn victims are women, according to the group, which urged women to say “No” when asked to participate in explicit photographs.
If threatened with revenge porn after the end of a relationship, women should keep records and keep text messages as evidence and seek professional assistance, the group said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods