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Revenge Porn: Not a Good (or Legal) Holiday Gift

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So you have these pictures of your ex . . . you know the ones.  Now that the good times are over, you’re wondering what you can do with them.  It would be so satisfying to indulge that basic human urge for revenge by forwarding them to a few choice associates.  Or maybe even posting them online for the benefit of a larger audience. The short legal answer is that your best choice is to suck it up and keep them to yourself. This spring, Utah became one of thirteen states to enact a “Revenge Porn” law.  The law’s official name is the Distribution of Intimate Images Act.  You are breaking this law if you intentionally distribute an intimate image of someone (example: your ex) to a third party knowing that you don’t have the person in the picture’s consent.  And you have to do it with the intention of causing emotional distress or harm (example: revenge).    Incidentally, if the person in the picture is under 18 you have committed a whole different crime (pro tip: never do this). Obviously this law applies if you happened to have snapped the explicit pictures without the other person’s knowledge (And, once again, if this applies to you, you have committed several additional crimes).  But it applies equally if the pictures were taken consensually.  You might think that if someone sends you a picture of their own free will you are then the owner of that picture and free to do with it whatever you want.   Not so.  Noncommercial intimate images come with an expectation of privacy, meaning that the giver has the right to expect that they won’t be misused.   The most commonly cited comparison is that when you give a waiter your credit card to pay for your meal, you don’t […]

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