Victims of revenge porn don't want guarantees for perpetrators

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A heated debate is taking place in the US because women who are victims of "revenge porn" want no First Amendment protection for perpetrators.

California's new law criminalizing "revenge porn" has gotten people talking about whether the First Amendment guarantees you the right to post naked pictures of your exes to the Internet.

Victims of vindictive pornography distribution, aka revenge porn, are often women who originally shared naked pictures of themselves with their boyfriends. The distribution of the photos online can be utterly humiliating for the woman in those pictures, especially if they're attached to her name and address.

"Criminalizing the distribution of that which was freely given and freely received would be invalidated under the First Amendment," judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox, where he's an analyst. "The First Amendment is not the guardian of taste."

A "suitably clear and narrow" law banning nonconsensual postings would likely survive court challenges, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has written.

"I think the courts can rightly conclude that as a categorical matter," he wrote, "such nude pictures indeed lack First Amendment value."