Last Thursday, Reps. Sydney Carlin, D-Manhattan, and Stephanie Clayton, R-Overland Park, offered an amendment to a house bill that would make it illegal to post nude photos or videos of a former significant other without consent.
Carlin and Clayton introduced the amendment as their own separate bill both this year and last year in the House Appropriations Committee. According to the Wichita Eagle article “Two lawmakers propose bills to outlaw revenge porn in Kansas,” Carlin and Clayton’s goals were to deter revenge porn, which has become an online trend.
The bill died in committee last year and again this year. Now, Carlin and Clayton have added their portion of the bill that deals with the breach of privacy and blackmail, otherwise known as “revenge porn,” to an already existing house bill that deals with crimes committed on electronic devices.
“This legislation is for adults, men and women, that have been victims of images that have been posted online without their consent,” Carlin said. “These posts are done in anger and in retaliation of a broken relationship. It’s written for people that are 18 and older, to make it a crime to host a website and post compromising photos and videos.”
Clayton said the issue does not only affect younger adults and college-age individuals.
“I was surprised the victims that came to me were my age, early 40s,” Clayton said. “Regardless of age, it always comes to an unfortunate result.”
Karen McCulloh, Manhattan mayor, said she agrees that “revenge porn” is happening to people of all ages.
“This amendment could possibly affect older people more than younger, just because older people don’t realize the power of Internet and that the things you do on the Internet are permanent,” McCulloh said. “I did a Ted Talk at Kansas State University, and I didn’t think about people looking at my Facebook page, but they did and questioned me on some of my comments.”
Carlin said that last year only 16 states had similar pieces of legislation, and now that number has increased to 26 states.
“This needed to be its own kind of legislation because previously, there was no way to prosecute and many ways to get out of criminal charges,” Carlin said. “There are websites, such as myex.com, that allow for this kind of posting. Those websites are now vulnerable for prosecutions as well.”
The American Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns that the legislation could potentially trample on the First Amendment, according to the Wichita Eagle article “Revenge porn bill gets second look from Kansas lawmakers.”
Clayton said an amendment she plans to add to the legislation would address those concerns by exempting “a person acting with a bona fide and lawful scientific, educational, governmental, news or similar public purpose.”
“This bill primarily covers person-to-person exchanges for private citizens,” Clayton said. “A public platform is, through federal law, if it is deemed newsworthy from some sort of figure head, still allowed to be shared. The amendments to the bill clarify that issue.”
There are many laws protecting other forms of privacy, including financial and medical information, but laws protecting sexual privacy are a new platform, Carlin said in a press release.
McCulloh said she imagines people would be more reluctant to post photos or videos if there is a legal consequence.
“I hope this encourages people to think once or twice before doing something evil to another person,” McCulloh said.
Carlin said she was raised with the philosophy that if it is right, you do it.
“This is the right thing to do,” Carlin said. “People should not find themselves in compromising situations from people hidden behind computers.”
