Revenge Pornography: An Analysis of Privacy, Obscenity, and the First Amendment

An important issue in modern communication law and policy is the emergence of harassment via the Internet and social media. One form of such harassment is revenge pornography, the sharing of sexual images or videos without the consent of the individual depicted, usually at the hands of an ex-lover. In punishing the posters and purveyors of revenge pornography, perpetrators are often convicted of unrelated crimes such as identify theft or fraud, furthering the silence of revenge pornography. This new challenge in law raises some serious questions about the intersections of obscenity, privacy and the First Amendment in the effort to most ethically take cases to court. To handle both the logistics and impact of persecuting revenge pornography, law students and professionals must consider our country’s history of gendered violence, the intent behind such pornographic posts, and the weight of modern communication as a vehicle for violence and invasion