SACRAMENTO — Dubbed the “Revenge Porn 2.0 Act” by Sen. Anthony Cannella, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation to expand California’s revenge porn ban to include “selfies.”
The law passed last year makes it a misdemeanor to post private, graphic pictures or footage of someone online with the intention of humiliating them.
Canella, who spearheaded the original legislation, changed the language of the bill to broaden the type of images covered by the law, and specifically to make it irrelevant who originally created the explicit image.
One of the specific goals of the expansion was to protect men or women who take a nude or explicit pictures of themselves (a selfie) and send it in confidence to a mate or lover — only to find it posted online when the relationship goes south.
Brown also signed Assembly Bill 2643, by Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, that permits a person whose sexually explicit image is posted online without his or her consent to bring a civil action against the person posting the image.
Wieckowski said in a prepared statement that “this type of cyber retaliation is an increasingly common tactic used to humiliate and harass victims, especially women.… This legislation attacks this reprehensible behavior by creating a clear path for a civil remedy.”