Revenge porn?

There are websites on the Internet devoted to “revenge porn”, apparently, which is where, on the failure of a relationship, someone chooses to post kinky photographs of a former girlfriend or boyfriend online. Other similar cases would include the posting of revealing self-images without the person’s authorisation, although not necessarily as a result of the failure of a relationship.

It has been announced that “revenge porn” will now be illegal.

I’m sure the people whose photographs are posted online will be upset — but I’m not so sure this should be illegal. Someone who has sent others such photographs, and there are many people who send such images to all and sundry, has chosen to put such images into the public domain. A person with a certain level of standards would never send such images in the first place. Why should such people be allowed to control the image after it has left their phone or computer?

Like it or not, revenge porn is a well-deserved punishment of a certain type of person. As the people involved are not children — which is another issue — why is this going to become illegal?

Indeed, where is the substantial harm? Few people look at such websites, and the chances of anyone finding a certain person’s naked images on a revenge porn website are close to zero. Even if someone’s images become known within the local community, there is still no genuine harm involved.

It seemed once that the Internet was a zone of freedom, where most of the laws that complicate life in the real world didn’t apply or weren’t applied. Now there is a frenetic attempt to legislate for the Internet. Would it not be more sensible to take the view that the bar for “serious harm” relating to anything posted online must be very high indeed – given the huge amounts of information, reliable and unreliable, on the Internet, and the “throwaway” nature of all postings on the Internet? Unfortunately, the Internet was a great opportunity for libertarians to support the development of a new realm of life that was not encumbered with petty laws – and yet that chance is now slipping away from us.