Ever think about uploading that sex tape you made with your ex to the Internet? Well, you might want to think twice about it if you live in Florida, because victims of "revenge porn" soon may not have to take it, uh, lying down anymore. There's a bill working its way through Tallahassee to make it a felony to publish that nude photo or video you have stashed in your bed's box spring.
House Bill 787, which has already passed through two subcommittees, was penned by a Brevard County Sheriff's deputy named Daniel Ogden, who says he was inspired by victims of Internet harassment coming forward.
"This is about a person posting an image that has no legitimate purpose but to harass a victim by associating it to their name, their social media with their personal identifiers," he tells MyFox Orlando. "It puts them at risk; it puts them at emotional distress from the [effects] of these postings."
If passed, the "Computer of Electronic Device Harassment" bill would make such an act a third-degree felony and carry up to five years in jail -- not to mention make it impossible to ever get a girlfriend to make a sex tape ever again.
Not everyone believes this bill would work, though. Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami, tells the International Business Times the terms of the bill could be perhaps "too narrow" in how it defines "consent."
"If a woman's skirt blows up in the wind and she is not wearing anything underneath, can an image of her be posted to an up-skirt porn site? What about mothers breast-feeding in public? Is a public bathroom public? What about a changing room in a department store?" Franks asks.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Goodson from Titusville, heads to the full Judiciary Committee next.
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