Image based abuse 'revenge porn' bill passes in Senate

Companies and individuals who share revenge porn will face hefty finds under legislation which has cleared the senate.

Laws against so-called revenge porn have passed the Senate, with penalties of up to $525,000 for corporations and $105,000 for individuals set to be introduced for the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

The legislation has support from across the political divide, but Labor said it did not go far enough.

"The non-consensual sharing of intimate images is exploitative, it's humiliating and it's a very damaging form of abuse. It needs to be treated as such," Labor senator Deb O'Neill said.

The Nick Xenophon Team, with the support of the opposition, the Greens, passed an amendment making revenge porn a criminal offence.

Under the civil penalty regime, a victim or someone authorised to act on their behalf could complain to the eSafety Commissioner.

The commissioner could then act swiftly - armed with the hefty penalties for perpetrators, social media services and content hosts - to have the images removed and to limit any further sharing.

Read the full article here.

We were approached for comment by the Geelong Advertiser earlier this month:

Grassroots activist group Collective Shout is “frequently hearing stories from adolescent girls of sexual harassment from their male classmates, sexist bullying, requests for nude images, unsolicited sexual images,” spokeswoman Caitlin Roper said.

Ms Roper said the “discussion is often centred on why women take sexual images rather than why men distribute these images without consent to punish and humiliate women.”

“This is not unlike much of the discourse around rape and sexual assault, where women are again being held responsible for the criminal acts of men and expected to modify their behaviour in order to avoid being victimised,” she said.  Read more here.