A bill to prevent the nonconsensual distribution of imagery or videos of sexual acts between adults on Friday passed a first reading and has been forwarded to a Legislative Yuan committee to be discussed.
The bill was jointly proposed by 18 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators.
It seeks to promote gender equality, uphold righteous and moral social conduct and to protect the privacy of individuals, all of which would help prevent incidents similar to South Korea’s “Nth Room” case, the proposal said.
The Nth Room involves a criminal investigation into the distribution of sexually exploitative videos via the Telegram app from 2018 to this year.
The bill cited incidents in which people have distributed sexual videos of their former partner online to shame them.
DPP Legislator Lai Pin-yu (賴品妤) said that current laws are insufficient to protect victims.
The nonconsensual distribution of videos and imagery of sexual intimacy can only be punishable under articles 235 and 310 of the Criminal Code, she said.
Article 235 states that a “person who distributes, broadcasts, sells, publicly displays, or by other means to show [sic] an obscene writing, picture, audio record, video record, or any other object to another person” can be sentenced to up to two years in jail, which can be commuted to a fine of NT$90,000, or the fine can be added to the sentence.
In Article 310, slander is punishable by a prison sentence of up to one year or a fine of up to NT$15,000.
If the person accused of slander produces evidence proving the truth of their claims, they cannot be punished, unless the defamatory fact concerns the victim’s private life and is of no public concern.
Lai said that the act that should be punished is the nonconsensual distribution of private incidents.
Victims lack the wherewithal to force platforms on which these videos or imagery are uploaded to remove them, Lai said, adding that there should be a legal basis to force the removal of uploads and prevent the victim’s reputation from being damaged further.
DPP Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) said that due to a lack of regulations, Taiwan is not immune to an Nth Room incident.
The bill seeks to protect people’s basic privacy and increase the penalties for such actions, she said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS