Revenge Pornography: A Dangerous Cybercrime and Government Laws Related to It

Running head: Cyber-crime and security
Revenge pornography
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CYBER-CRIME AND SECURITY
In the current technological world, the invention of several new technologies and
innovations has turned out to be blessing by simplifying the industrial as well as day to day
activities. However, with the increasing technological advantages, the cyber criminals or
hackers have also become smatter. Cybercrime has become a disastrous, yet common
computer crime in the current age (McGuire and Dowling 2013). The term cybercrime
indicates any type of crime, which takes place online. The cybercriminals or cyber attackers
often commit dangerous crimes by targeting the computer devices or networks. The
cybercrime gathers several offensive issues such as, copyright infringement, sextortion,
unwanted mass-surveillance, webcam blackmailing, hacking, child pornography, revenge
pornography and many others that that can harm the physical, metal as well as financial
security of the victim (Florêncio and Herley 2013). The smart tactics used by the criminals
often create immense difficulties for the IT specialists to investigate about the same.
Nevertheless, the one good information is that, the state, local or federal laws are becoming
comparatively strict regarding the destruction of the cybercrimes by implementing several
resources to stop and responding to the cyber threats and crimes. This essay is focus on one
major cybercrime “revenge pornography”. Additionally, a brief discussion regarding the topic
along with the government laws related to the offence is going to be discuss here. Lastly, the
essay will suggest some improvements that might make the existing policy more
sophisticated.
The disastrous cybercrime named Revenge pornography upholds the capabilities of
severely offending and causing harm to the victim as well as the society as a whole. Revenge
pornography describes the unethical practice of circulating confidential or private image or
videos of an individual, majorly at the time while they are participating in sex acts (Salter and
Crofts 2015). Moreover, it also describes the distribution of different sexually explicit videos
or images of the victims without considering their permission. The main purpose for which

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CYBER-CRIME AND SECURITY
the criminal makes the victim’s image or video viral online is to offend, blackmail and give
social harassment to the victim (Koppelman 2015). Those sexually explicit videos and
images might be made by one partner, who is involved in an intimate relationship with
consent or knowledge of the particular subject. However, in most cases the videos or images
are taken without the victims’ knowledge (Hall and Hearn 2017). Revenge pornography may
lead to higher mental health impact for the victims. The Victims might cope with serious
long-term psychological as well as personal consequences, and even those disseminated
videos or images might continue to harm the victim throughout their live (Kamal and
Newman 2016). The term Revenge pornography is also identified by the name non-
consensual pornography and comes under cyber stalking or cyber harassment. Recently,
importance of this unethical disastrous phenomenon have well-understood and the
government is also providing several enacted legislation, which criminalizes and opposes it
(Citron and Franks 2014).
The act of uploading pornographies having the intention to harm the victim mentally,
is now consider as one crime and the criminal has to face different punishment as per the
government legislations (Henry, Powell and Flynn 2017). All most all the countries in the
world have imposed several laws for eliminating the particular phenomenon. According to
the researches carried out in Australia, it has been found that, 23% of the respondents were
found to be the victim of this act. Meanwhile, it has been noticed that, among all, 20% of the
respondents were found to be the victim of release of private, sexual or nude photographs,
which are taken and uploaded without their knowledge. In addition, the survey has provided
an overall idea that, the main motive of this type of phenomenon is to threaten the victim by
distributing their sexual explicit videos, photographs and nude images without their
knowledge. Additionally, some self-disclosure of the Image Based Sexual Abuse (IBSA) has
been found in some research, which is about 10%.