Surely, you have heard of Revenge Porn, but you may not be aware of all the facets of this new crime. In fact, Revenge Porn is considered a crime only in these states: Australia, Germany, Israel, Canada, UK, 38 states in the US, the Philippines, Japan, Malta and only since 2019, Italy.
The law, however, does not seem to be enough in these countries, in fact, the crime still seems to be widespread. The most affected country seems to be Japan, with 27, 334 cases of non-consensual disclosure of intimate images reported to the police between 2008 and 2012: just over 6,800 complaints per year.
In 2012 in the United States, the phenomenon would have concretely affected one couple in twenty, the figure appears to be in line with research by the Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
In Italy, the largest network of Revenge porn is on Telegram with over 43 thousand subscribers in two months, 21 thematic channels connected and a volume of conversations that is around 30 thousand messages every day.1
Sexual obsessions: sexting and revenge porn
Sex is often at the center of interpersonal attacks. It can take the form of sexual obsessions for the attacker, exchange of pornographic material, sexual solicitation of minors.
Everything today is to be taken into consideration also in the light of technology. The problem of internet addiction is usually described as the excessive use of the technological medium, the loss of timing and the forgetting of basic needs, the negative mood declination when the computer is not available, the need of more hours of use and negative repercussions on relationships, social relationships and work. Internet addiction is closely related to sexual obsessions and in this sense we talk about cybersexual addiction (compulsive viewing and downloading of sexual material and erotic dialogues in chat) and cyberrelational addiction (online relationships become more important than those conducted in real life ).
Directly linked to this theme is the problem of the diffusion of self-produced pornographic material without coercion, especially about the criminalization of teenagers who produce child-pornography material.
To manage the sexting phenomenon, beyond the prison sentence and fine penalty, an ancillary penalty was added: the registration in the register of sex offenders. It is a list of people who have committed crimes strictly related to sexuality.
The factor that spreads this kind of behaviour is, first of all, anonymity.
This register has two functions, the first is to act as a deterrent to future offenses, the second is to increase awareness in the community about the characteristics of its inhabitants. The idea that teenager are also included in the register for crimes as sexting raises many doubts 2 sexting indicates the phenomenon of sending or receiving emails, text messages and other forms of electronic communication that contain sexual material: suggestive and provocative texts, images of people portrayed naked, half-naked or in sexually explicit poses.
Criminals usually identify three hypotheses: consensual taking and consensual sharing, consensual taking and non consensual sharing and non consensual taking and non consensual sharing.
The big problem is the lack of perception that the exchange of this material can have in the long term: loss of control over the image or video in the digital environment with negative impacts on their privacy and reputation.
It’s important to have great attention to the risk analysis of the actions that are taking place: there is a need to educate users in order to make them understood that once the digital data has gone out of the individual's availability and has started to circulate, you can’t stop it and it will be impossible to go back.
Beyond this, however, it is good to standardize the case in which this attention fails and punish the one who improperly disseminates the material we are talking about, as the revenge porn.
The revenge porn is at least as old as the internet, and yet only in recent years we have begun to realize the devastating scale that it can have: in Italy we began to talk about a bill to protect the victims (who are very often women, but not only) only after the case of Tiziana Cantone 3, the woman from Naples who, because of some videos put online against her will, committed suicide in September 2016.
Until then, there hasn't been much talk of revenge porn even though the practice was widespread. As usual, until someone paid dearly for the price of illegal actions no one worried about it, it took a case like the Cantone to shed light on a very serious problem that afflicts an unimaginable number of women.
Those who practice revenge porn can therefore be accused of harassment, violation of privacy, defamation, but also, of incitement to suicide.
So after a heated political debate on this issue, in July 2019 with 461 yes and no vote against, the Parliament unanimously approved the amendment to the bill on the Code Red establishing the crime of revenge porn, the practice of publicly sharing photographic images or intimate videos through the Internet without the consent of the protagonist of the videos. 4
Those who practice "revenge porn" can therefore be accused of harassment, violation of privacy, defamation. But also, of incitement to suicide, should the publication of the videos or images result in tragic acts.
The text states that "anyone who sends, delivers, transfers, publishes or disseminates images or videos of sexual organs or with sexually explicit content, intended to remain private, without the consent of the persons represented, shall be punished with imprisonment from one to six years and a fine ranging from 5,000 to 15,000 euros. The same punishment applies to those who, having received or in any case acquired the images or video, send, hand over, give over, publish or broadcast them without the consent of the persons represented in order to harm them".
The same penalty is also applied to "those who have received the material in question, and then publish and disseminate it, with the aim of causing damage to her or to the one who is seen in the photos or films. It is also established that the penalty is increased in the event that the dissemination of "compromising" material takes place at the hands of the spouse, even if separated or divorced, or by a person linked or who has been linked to the offended person. Same thing if the distribution of the material takes place through computer or telematic means".5
The new paradigm of violence: mass abuse on italian Telegram
Since January 19, the home of this pack is again on Telegram, the group is born, reaches the peak of users and is finally deleted by Telegram because "used to spread pornographic content", let the platform administrators know. Then a message fixed at the top of the chat redirects to a reserve group, the one to repopulate in case of cancellation. The new container that will hand down a shared legacy of private photos and videos.
The important thing, in any case, is the result:a rapid and exponential growth, but above all the guarantee that, in case of cancellation of the group, one of the other nodes of the network will be able to redirect to the new space created. Initially, the new group will maintain an unsuspected name, focusing on loyal users, and only later will return to its original appearance, continuing to expand using word of mouth at that point.
The users of the group are highly active and particularly prodigious with details about the profile of their victims. There are many teenagers, some even write that they are children, to justify their interest in child pornography. The youngest tend to be the most privacy-conscious, while the few accounts with first name, last name and real photo invariably belong to adults and middle-aged men. This is where the expression virtual rape takes on a completely different, painfully real connotation. There is nothing abstract in this violence, nothing harmless: there is sex used to assert power dynamics, there are the perpetrators and there are the victims. Everything happens on the internet, but the consequences have little virtual.
There are three cult objects: the photos of the exes, some amateur videos particularly difficult to find and the mythological "Bible 5.0", a huge file containing the shots of thousands of victims of revenge porn, catalogued by origin and displayed with name, surname and visible face. In the most extreme cases to be sold are entire archives of photos and videos, with private agreements and salaries in PayPal recharges and Amazon vouchers that can yield up to 150 euros per day. This is how Telegram becomes a small private business, in which profit is added to an already illegal dynamic. 6 7
