More on cyber issues and pornography

Every day, I read a newspaper or online article about a revenge porn incident, or about another country considering new legislation to address the issues of cyber-pornography and/or revenge porn. For instance, today, there was an article in a U.K. newspaper about revenge porn victim Hannah Thompson. She is demanding helpline to kill explicit online pictures of revenge porn victims. There was another article regarding the fact that revenge porn could be made a specific offence in the U.K. and the fact that their proposed revenge porn bill is to be debated in the House of Lords today. In the U.S., there was an article today about the first Virginia woman to be charged under its new revenge porn law.

Various recent interesting articles and books have also been published on cyber issues, pornography, and revenge porn in the last few weeks, in both Canada and the U.S.

For instance, there are two recent publications (French) pertaining to cyber issues and pornography which came out recently in Quebec:

1. The first publication, authored by Caroline Vallet, is a book pertaining to the protection of kids towards online pornography. The book is entitled “La protection des mineurs face à la cyberpédopornographie” (editor Yvon Blais) and provides a comparative analysis of the Canadian and French criminal legal systems. Vallet did her doctorate degree in law (2005-2010) on this topic under the supervision of professor Vincent Gautrais.

2. An interesting article on revenge porn entitled “La criminalisation du « revenge porn » : entre théorie et pratique” came out two weeks ago. This article is authored by a former student of mine and lawyer Marie-Andrée Boutin-Clermont and is published in the Technologies de l’information en bref publication (editor Yvon Blais) of October 2014. It provides a critical analysis of some of the recent U.S. revenge porn laws, as well as an overview of how the Canadian legislator is planning to legislate on this issue.

In the U.S.:

3. Mary Anne Franks and Danielle Citron, two U.S. law professors who have pioneered U.S. legislation criminalizing revenge porn, have recently published an interesting article on this topic which is available on SSRN: Criminalizing Revenge Porn and Combating Non-Consensual Pornography  (September 2014).

4. Danielle Citron also has a new book (September 2014) entitled Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (Harvard University Press) dealing with, amongst other things, these issues.

This content has been updated on October 22, 2014 at 19 h 00 min.