A YouTuber and his assistant have been ordered to pay NT$1 million (US$32,548) to each of two women whose likenesses they used in deepfake pornography videos, one of whom was Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷).
Chu Yu-chen (朱玉宸), who goes by Xiaoyu (小玉) on YouTube, was arrested in October last year on suspicion of creating and selling deepfake pornography videos of dozens of politicians and influencers, accumulating more than NT$13 million in illicit profits.
In July, the New Taipei City District Court sentenced Chu to five years and six months in prison and his assistant, Chuang Hsin-jui (莊炘睿), to three years and eight months for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法).
Photo provided by Huang Jie’s office
Prosecutors have appealed the ruling on the grounds that the sentences are too light.
The verdicts in two of 21 civil lawsuits also filed in July by Chu and Chuang’s victims were made public on Monday. The complainants were Huang and an unidentified female flight attendant.
In its ruling, the New Taipei District Court said that in today’s Internet-based society, it is nearly impossible to expunge content that has been shared online.
Photo: CNA
As a result, Chu and Chuang’s victims would continue to be haunted by the misuse of their likenesses for decades, along with harm to their reputations, it said.
Perpetrators of “digital sexual violence” such as Chu and Chuang can often only be prosecuted for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act, the court said.
Due to a lack of legal tools with regard to holding the owners of platforms and sites that disseminate such content accountable, the threat of a civil lawsuit is often the only legal deterrent that potential victims have at their disposal, the court said in its verdict.
Huang thanked the court for serving justice and bringing “some measure of comfort” to the two.
“However, the more pressing issue is still the passage of a digital sexual violence law” in Taiwan, with provisions on preventing and punishing such crimes, and a mechanism for removing the offending content from the Internet, she said.
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