The Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation yesterday proposed a draft bill to ban revenge pornography, saying current laws are insufficient to prevent the crime and protect victims.
Recent years have seen increased cases of cyberattacks against women, with the majority of them being revenge pornography, foundation chief executive Fan Ching (范情) said.
While the precise number of victims is unknown, the foundation this year alone has helped approximately 200 victims of revenge pornography and the media on average reports one such case every day, foundation deputy executive officer Jasmine Bai (白智芳) told a news conference in Taipei.
Under current law, victims of revenge pornography who wish to press charges against those distributing the photographs or videos typically have to sue them for contravening their privacy or distributing obscene content, lawyer Mik Chen (陳明清) said.
However, the provisions on such offenses in the Criminal Code were written before cybercrime became prevalent and do not offer victims the protection they deserve, he said.
“By suing others for distributing obscene content, the victim in a way makes herself the subject of something considered obscene and most find that unacceptable,” Chen said.
Revenge pornography is only considered a contravention of someone’s privacy under the Criminal Code if the victim never agreed to the filming or photography in the first place, even when the victim later refuses permission to share the content with others, he said.
While distributors of obscene content are sentenced to no more than two years in prison, contravention of privacy is most often punished by fining the perpetrator, lawyer Chu Fang-chun (朱芳君) said.
Under the draft act proposed by the foundation, which has worked on it with a group of 10 experts for a year, anyone who distributes a person’s intimate, sexual photographs or videos without their consent, even when the person had previously agreed to the photographs or video being taken, is guilty of distributing revenge pornography and would be subject to a prison sentence of between six month and five years, Chen said.
“The punishment should be more severe if the distributor has used the sexual content to blackmail the victim,” he added.
For victims, there is nothing worse than having unwanted content distributed on the Internet, because there is no way to ensure it is completely removed, Chu said.
Considering that, the draft act also requires that Internet service providers to remove the content and preserve the evidence within 24 hours of being informed by police of a revenge pornography case, she said.
Internet service providers that fail to comply would be fined between NT$200,000 and NT$1 million (US$6,554 and US$32,770), she added.
The draft act also bans the media from revealing any information that could disclose the identity of a revenge pornography victim, she said, adding that those who do would be fined between NT$100,000 and NT$1 million.
The draft act also requires the distributor to cover all the expenses incurred when removing the content from the Internet, she said.
The foundation is to hold a public hearing with Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) next month to discuss and promote the draft act, Fan said.
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